We Are the Fated
by horsecrazy2
Summary: Six were Chosen. This is their story. A re-telling of Final Fantasy VIII for the Seiftis fans.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Ok, so some notes on this, so you know what you're getting into. This is not a strict novelization. The premise of this fic is that Cid dies shortly after the orphanage gang arrives at B. Garden, and consequently, Garden is defunded and all cadets and SeeDs are split up between the remaining two Gardens. The gang ends up at Galbadia. I wanted to see how this would change the course of the story, and, as you'll see, along the way I've added a lot onto canon events, played around with their childhoods (since we really don't know much about them, particularly after the kids left the orphanage) and just in general tweaked a lot of things. I wanted to tackle an epic project like a novelization, but I know me, and I know I would be utterly bored following a script that I already know without deviating from the beaten path. Originally I was going to post the prologue and the first chapter together, since this is quite short; I don't, however, have time to edit the first chapter tonight, but thought I would throw this up anyway, just to get the story going. This is going to be a very large project; I will update regularly, but I don't know exactly how close together those updates will be. I just started the fourth chapter of this tonight, so I have a fair amount of story beneath my belt, but I like to space chapters out and not post them as I write them; it's nice to be a little ahead of myself. **

**This is going to be very long; I don't think you can novelize (or bastardize, in this case) any Final Fantasy game in a way that does it justice while keeping it to a mere hundred pages. For the moment, my intention is to post this all as one fic, but depending upon how long it works out to be, I may split it in half and post a second part, for those of you who pick this up after I am some ways into it and don't want to wade through three million words of fanfiction.**

**Some general warnings, so I don't spoil plot points but so you know what you're getting into: Because this is swerving off the beaten track, anything goes. If you've ever read anything of mine before, you know I do not treat my main characters nicely; you know the good guys die sometimes; you know that just in general, some really bad shit happens to them. I cannot guarantee everyone makes it out alive. They may, they may not; even I do not know yet. If you're looking for something that tells the story of Final Fantasy VIII exactly as it unfolded on your computer or your TV screen, turn away. If you cannot stomach graphic violence and serious subject matter, turn away. If you are looking for a fluffy take on child mercenaries, turn away.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy. You guys know that. What you should also know is that I'm pretty damn poor, and I can hit really hard, so if you try and sue me for borrowing this world and these characters, I will punch you. It will hurt.**

**Also, the quote from the book Seifer mentions at the very beginning is indeed an actual quote from an actual book. It is Blade of Tyshalle, by Matthew Stover, book two in the Act of Caine series, and if you enjoy your fantasy bloody, I highly recommend the series. Not for the faint of heart, but some damn good action and enough philosophy to get your brain working. The line 'So what I say to them is that fate is for those too weak to determine their own destiny, and also, suck my dick, you fat fucking asshole' is a quote from Kamran Hamid, just severely paraphrased, by the end. **

**With that being said, here we go. I hope you enjoy.**

**Prologue**

_ There is something about dodging fate that gives me the warm and fucking fuzzies, because the only book I ever actually finished once told me that some people say Time is both a hammer and a blade: that the hammer is a sculptor's mallet, and the blade is a sculptor's chisel: that each stroke is a refinement, a perfecting, a discovery of truth and beauty within what would otherwise be blank and lifeless stone._

_ Thing is, the way I like to look at it is that _I'm _that hammer and that chisel, and I'm carving my own path through everything that is _supposed to be_; me, not Time, and whatever Fate or Time or whatthefuckever had planned can just re-route itself around me, on my own goddamned schedule._

_ Some people say I am a narcissistic asshole. _

_ So what I say to them is that fate is for those too weak to determine their own destiny, and also, suck my dick, you fat fucking asshole._

_ I like to believe the author of that one and only book I ever finished would approve, because what is a hero, if not someone who will say 'fuck off' to what is supposed to be, to what is accepted: a hero makes his own path; he does not take the ones others have pre-arranged for him, or some metaphorical shit like that._

_ I always wanted to be a hero._

_ What I have learned about heroes could fill a book of my own, because the thing about heroes and villains and good vs. evil is that it's all this matter of perception; ever notice how the winner is always the good guy? It's not about good always triumphing over evil or some kitten-crapping rainbow shit like that. Kick the shit out of the other side good and long and hard enough and you get to write the history books; you get to be the 'hero'. _

_ That was always my plan, you know. Bash in enough faces, and who's going to be fucking stupid enough to tell me _I'm _the asshole? _

_ It's when you get caught up in your own legend that shit starts to get slippery. And somewhere along the way you realize there _are _all these invisible paths you're supposed to follow, and it looks like you might have just taken the wrong goddamned one._

_ And that's when the choice comes, and I don't care what you believe about fate, because it's what _you _choose, not some unseen guiding hand, so face shit like you've got a fucking pair: it's a long goddamned road back to redemption, but we'll all take it sooner or later, and that's the real fucking lesson here. _

_ It took me too long to understand about all of that, those paths and how history belongs to the winners even if they were cocksuckers, and it all started with my mother, just like it probably did with yours._

_ She used to tell me these stories, y'see. Princesses in towers and the princes who rescued them and the witches who died horribly, except the thing was she forgot everything in between: that time the 'hero' took advantage of someone weaker than him, just because he could; the witch who started out as a nice lady with a garden and a house full of kids; the real good guy- the kind stories should be written about but aren't because he's not 'flashy' enough- getting shit all over by life for no goddamned rhyme or reason-_

_ The heroes who become villains and the villains who become heroes._

_ Another thing she didn't tell me: we are all heroes and villains, simultaneously, and we can only ever do what feels right, according to our own beliefs, our own code, and fuck the naysayers-_

_ They don't know shit anyway _

_ My mother was a goddamned liar with good intentions, and this is everything she forgot to tell me:_


	2. Chapter One Part One

**A/N: Mischkaaa- yes, this story is going to showcase Seifer and Quistis. Basically, they are the main characters, but several other people are important secondary characters who will get their time in the spotlight. It'll basically be like my other fics, in that while the main focus is on Seifer and Quistis, there will be lots of other stuff going on. There are many things I want to explore that the game just sort of glossed over. I haven't tagged this fic yet just in the hopes that maybe someone who is not ordinarily a Seifer/Quistis fan will give it a try (although the 'for the Seiftis fans' part of the summary has probably already scared them off). I actually don't think I tagged Witch until I was a ways into it, so this one will probaby eventually be tagged as well, just not for right now. I hate the tagging system on here and how you can only pick two characters; this fic isn't just an excuse to make two hot blondes bump fuzzies and will involve many themes and characters.**

**Thanks for your reviews, everyone. You guys left comments so quickly I feel like you're all a bunch of crackheads and I'm feeding your addiction. To be fair, though, I can hardly talk: I'm the one who wrote over half a million words of fanfic featuring Seifer and Quistis in just a little over a year. I guess that makes me the biggest crack addict of all.**

**Chapter One**

Lapin Beach

Dollet

Ahead of him the sky flares, flares again, and for just a moment his eyes are full of white dust that reminds him of childhood rockets in a summer sky: little flashbulb flickers of pyrotechnic white that smear his vision red-

The assault boat strikes solid land, sinks forward, and around him the clockwork ticking of machinery cranking and cooling and firing back up again goes off like each of these sounds are separate little countdowns, winding down-

Hyperion feels like a lead fucking anchor in his hand, but he is Seifer Almasy and he does not get nervous or scared or uncertain, so he keeps his smirk on his face and his free hand in his pocket, and behind him he feels a shifting, an anxious ripple of bodies against his back, and in front of him is a different kind of shifting, a quivering-

And now the doors peel themselves aside, and up across one shoulder goes Hyperion-

"Seifer,wait-"

And he leaps.

* * *

He is swallowed.

He can hear only his tidal pulse in his ears, and inside his chest his jackhammer heart stops, starts again, and now inside his gloves his fingers slide themselves into long slick coils of slow fist clench-

There is sand underneath his boots.

For just a moment, this is the only thing he can comprehend.

There is always this moment, during combat: when you are nothing more and nothing less than the dust in your nose and the air in your lungs and the thundering blood-tide in your fucking skull, and if you're one of the really good ones, this hesitation is so infinitesimal the human eye cannot even comprehend it.

You better fucking believe he is one of the good ones.

He is one seamless movement, a flowing, and he pours into and out of openings so fast he is simply there and then not: one moment your head is still attached to your neck, and then it is not.

Hot dust in his lungs and salt-copper blood on his tongue and fucking _bring it_, assholes: show him what you've got.

Ready when you are.

He kicks one of the fuckers in the balls when the asshole shoves a gun in his face, and finishing him off is nothing more than an afterthought: a flick of his wrist stabs Hyperion down through the strip of material between chin and collarbone and the guy's throat gives, flexes shut around his gunblade, vomits it back up smeared red.

"Secure the communication tower!" Trepe yells from somewhere behind him, and two more flickers of his gunblade and he's cleared the path to the top of the dune just beyond the beach.

He watches her sprint past him, whip uncoiled, three students in her wake, and a guy could get himself killed, watching that ass instead of what's going on around him.

He likes to think it's Garden's fault anyway, for implementing a goddamned girl's uniform that could double as a fucking cocktail napkin.

Five easy strides catch him up to her at the top of the hill, where she is directing students, and it's probably fucked up as hell, but something about watching her boss them around makes him go all tingly inside.

He wants to know what she does with that whip when she isn't busy trying to walk normally with its handle up her ass.

"Seifer, go on ahead with Squad B. We need to secure the communication tower before the Dollet soldiers seal it off."

He leans down against the handle of Hyperion, bringing himself almost eye-to-eye with her; she still has to tilt her head back a good inch just to make eye contact with him, and the flush of irritation this brings to her cheeks is enough to smoke his heart, just a little.

He leans further down into her personal space. "You don't get to boss _me _around, Trepe. We're on the same level here, remember?"

"Someone has to keep a leash on you," she replies coldly.

"Is that what you're into?" He smiles.

"Only if it's you, and the collar is electrified-"

"I can handle that; I like a little pain, Trepe."

"-and it isn't your neck that it's strapped to." She calmly coils up her whip and clips it back onto her belt. "I don't think they make them that small, however."

"You could find out for yourself," he sneers. "Hands-on research is the only way to know for sure-"

"Move out," she orders, and starts off up the path ahead of him.

* * *

There is only the soft murmur of her breathing in the grass beside him and smoke-scent in his nostrils, sealing his tear ducts shut, and he really fucking hates this waiting shit.

"Let's move in."

"Not yet."

On his right, Cadet What'sherface shifts the point of her hip into his ribcage and a glare and a snarling order to keep her fucking hands to herself and she shifts back over toward the cadet to her own right, and now Quistis gives him a look like he is a piece of shit she just stepped in, and something curdles inside his chest.

"_Quiet_."

"_Shhh_; I'm trying to _listen_, Trepe. I can't concentrate with all this noise you're making. Doesn't the SeeD manual say something about keeping your fucking trap shut when you're reconning?"

He can hear all the teeth in her mouth grind together, click click clicking up against one another like they are all each little explosions of their own, echoing the ones he can still hear going off on the beach far behind them.

She says nothing.

He smiles.

Below them, the two guards flanking the entrance to the building behind them twitch, twitch again, and he watches their hands creep nervously from guard to trigger, and really, what the fuck _are _they waiting for? Two enemy combatants against five full-fledged SeeDs, and hell, he could take them both by _himself_: watch and see if he doesn't.

He stands.

"_Seifer_, get _down_-"

Fira sizzles in his veins and paints sunset down his hands, and for just a moment he can only stand here, savoring this white-nuclear heat in his blood and smoke in his heart, and now this smoke in his heart becomes white noise in his ears and the thing he always notices about victory is the way it _tastes_, before he's even thrown the first blow.

He lets the spell fly.

It ignites the man on the left first, and now there is only the charred-meat stink of his tobacco-ash body, swaying, crumpling, folding into dust, and this inferno leaps, surges, and one hasty round squeezed off in panic is all the other guard manages before he too is consumed, chewed down into black-bone dust beside his comrade.

He throws himself down across Quistis, and never say he's not a gentleman, because this one hasty round squeezed off in panic whines past close enough for him to _feel_; close enough that when he pops his head back up, there is now a long thin line of gutted sleeve seam flapping in the wind, spilling little fluttering spines of snapped-off threads into the sky.

He watches them fly. "God_dammit_-"

She shoves him off her. "We _wait _because there could be more of them nearby, and you've just given away our _position_-"

Well, fucking excuse him for just _taking a bullet for her_. Next time the bitch can just _eat _it.

"Looks fine to _me_, Trepe. Maybe you need your prescription upped." He points to the flinching cadet on his right, and really, who the fuck even let this sniveling little girl out here? He can spot a failure a mile away: it took him three tries to pass his own SeeD test, after all, so it's not like he doesn't know. "You- get down there. The rest of you follow her. _Now_."

They do, which is another thing Trepe never quite understood: sometimes when you really just need to get shit done, there is no time for a _please _or one of those patiently understanding smiles of hers she is always giving out to everyone who is not him, and if this makes him the asshole instructor, they are still doing what he told them to, and what it really comes down to is results.

And he is going to get those results before she does. Three runs at his SeeD test, and he is passing this exam his first fucking try, if it kills him. And just fucking _imagine _the look on her face, if he passes this test and makes instructor before her.

There is a squeezing inside his chest, a brief constriction like a fist folding itself closed over his heart, and he knocks his tongue off the roof of his mouth and puts on his best asshole smile, because he already knows what she is going to say, how she is going to look at him, and the only thing worse than this cold sweeping look that will suck his balls back up inside of him and freeze them to the back of his spine, is her knowing that he is serious.

"We could die out here, you know," he points out conversationally.

She pushes herself onto both knees and dusts herself carefully off, and Save the Queen slaps itself noisily down against her thigh, well-oiled leather on itchy polyester, and she is so close this is almost louder than the far-away thunderstorm of that flashbulb beach behind them. "I'm well aware of that."

"How about a kiss for good luck? If you ask really nicely, I'll even use tongue."

She does not even dignify this with a response; she turns her back to him so quickly there is suddenly this brief incendiary flash of hope inside of him, like this is a careful distancing, purposeful, because she can't let him see that part of her wants to, that somewhere deep, underneath all her layers of cool indifference, she actually _cares _if he gets his ass blown off-

She cared once, you know.

He thinks of rust-flaking swing chains in his hands and sleep-twitching legs tangled up in his own, and she is all soft-velvet cheek against him in the dark and even softer silk hair in his hands-

And the ground spasms underneath him, bucks, and he is thrown cursing facedown into swirling hot-blood dust-

"Seifer-"

He spits, comes up snarling, brushes her hand off his arm, and now both his lids peel themselves stinging open and in front of him is a smoking crater where the opening of that communication tower used to be, where he just sent _three fucking kids _to die-

He scrambles to his feet.

"_Wait_-"

The cliff in front of him is a long drop, but the path sloping down toward the communication tower will take him the long way around, and he doesn't have the fucking time for that right now.

He leaps.

His landing is one long hammer stroke to all his joints, and for just a moment he is all newborn water limbs, shaking, knees folding down and down and down, and one quick downward stab of Hyperion is the only thing that saves him; he slumps heavily down onto its handle for just a moment, bolstering himself, and then a shove and a lean gets his legs moving underneath him once more, and he runs flat fucking out for that smoking crater of an opening.

* * *

Tell you a secret: He doesn't really like killing.

It's all about the _winning_, see?

It's about getting there first, making the other guy eat a foot full of shining blade point before the asshole can do the same to you, and he has always been top of the class when it comes to hurting other people before they hurt him.

He carves his way through the smoking bottom level without checking to see if Quistis has followed him; without letting himself linger on all the little wet-gleaming pieces of the cadets he sent in ahead of them; without _thinking_: this is all about sensation now, the weight of his weapon in his hand and the thundering of his heart in his ears and hot blood in his teeth and warm salt-sweat in his eyes, and he _swings_, pivots, casually spins Hyperion into a crescent that punches up through one man's chest and reverses itself into another's-

Meat-smoke in his mouth and shit-reek in his nose, and the one thing that SeeD manual never mentioned was all this _smell_: barbeque death scent of overdone meat and sweet-sour blood so thick he can _taste _it-

But he never did place a lot of stock in that manual: too many goddamned rules, all lined too neatly up, ordered into tidy little rows of steps that do not mean a fucking thing, in the middle of all this chaos.

His favorite instructor once told him that fighting is all about shutting off, powering down: what you need is not your brain, but years upon years of training hammered into muscles that respond no matter what information your brain collects from all this chaos going on around you. Your muscles do not understand dying comrades or shit-leaking pieces of vomit-stained bowel or some woman you are fucking stupid enough to love somewhere behind you, trying not to get her head blown off: it is like you are suspended, wrapped up in all these layers of action, reaction, cradled by this moment, tucked away inside it where thinking is only something that will slow you down. And he gets that, he really does, and for the most part, he is all seamless motion and nothing else: rippling coat and swinging blade and this butcher's meat squelch of his weapon getting there first, but he is still human after all, and when she cries out, this suspension, this one static moment in which it seems like he is the only one moving- it all just fucking _thaws_, runs, melts out from underneath his feet, and now the two halves of him crash together, the piece that is only Seifer the SeeD, unstoppable, and the one that is just Seifer the man, vulnerable-

And he turns, and behind him her hair flashes, and flashes again through all this smoke between them, and there is a warning rumble, a tremor underneath his feet, and he watches her dive, roll-

The smoke between them flares white along the corners of his vision and he is upended, _spun_, and it is like his whole world comes apart: a pinhole of a star that contracts and opens to swallow him and swirling dust in his lungs and thick sweet-sour blood he can't _breathe _salt-sweat adhesive in his throat and something screams inside his head and this screaming takes him apart at the seams and slaps him messily back together he hurts so _bad _he is all white-nuclear flame and thermite limbs-

The pinhole star flattens out into stark black shadows in the dark above him, and now more screaming fills his ears, a groaning, and far above his head the bomb-warped bones of the lower-level lift fold, crumple inward, tip themselves forward-

He shuts his eyes.

* * *

For a moment, her head is full of flying: a weightless tipping, a soaring; endless blue forever beyond and underneath her, and she can remember, barely, that this is what she used to think it was like to be a bird.

She once read somewhere that falling is all about the flight, an escape; that the landing should be only an afterthought; that stepping beyond the cliff is not about death but freedom, and for just a moment she thinks she may have stepped beyond this cliff, that this soaring is the highest point of her leap before the inevitability of her landing.

Her mouth is all cotton-wad desert and the dry sticking of her throat and the tinny clicking of her teeth and if falling is all about flying, it is also about swimming, floundering: she strokes up and up and up through layers of white, and when her head breaks the surface, there is a blinding flash, one hot blue spark that becomes an inferno-

* * *

For a moment, her nose is full of death.

Roasted electronics and hot steel liquid and burning hair, and she thinks of his beautiful blonde bangs, bright as the sun, cooked down into shriveled ash to lie like feathers on his forehead-

"Trepe!"

She blinks.

The assembling of her world layer by careful layer does not reveal much: there is only the thick belching of the smoke from the crumpled maw of the lift and shapes beside her in the dark, unmoving silhouettes she does not really want to look too closely at, for too long, and now in between these unmoving silhouettes she does not want to look too closely at for too long, his face swims into one of these layers, becomes another stratum in this careful reconstruction of her surroundings.

"Let's move. We can't reach the upper levels from here anymore; we need to find another way to the top."

Instructor Brandeen reaches out for her elbow, pulls her upright too quickly, too roughly; she scrambles to get her feet together underneath her, holding tightly onto her whip as she is lifted-

They are leaving him.

She is being pulled along, hurried, and somewhere behind her he is buried, submerged, and what would it feel like, to be compressed into dust beneath layers upon layers of soft metal skeleton bent and folded and warped into new shapes in the dark-

"Wait- SeeD Almasy is-"

"If he was in there, he's dead."

"He might not be- I couldn't see where he was when the charge went off-"

"If he isn't dead, we don't have time to dig him out. You orders are to take command of Squad B and find a way up to the top of this tower. Almasy is a SeeD: he's expendable. This tower is not. Move out."

They are waiting for her at the top of the pathway beyond the building, huddled together into one blood and mud-streaked tangle, and now she is torn: these children on top of this hill who need her guidance, her instruction, or a fellow SeeD entombed in dust and hot steel bones sharp enough to pin, to kill-

These children who need someone to tell them what to do, or a man who has never wanted anyone to tell him what to do.

"Trepe! _Move_!"

He could never understand, but she has her _orders_, can't he see that? She is beholden to Garden, not to him, and he knew what he signed up for when he walked through that door: it is about the whole now and not the individual, and he is only a small insignificant piece of the machine, a cog, and a faulty one at that.

She pauses with one foot on the dry-dirt crumbling of the ground underneath her and the other on the splintered pieces of shattered foundation that have leaked out beyond the doorway, shining in the sunlight-

And she turns back toward the hill.

This squeezing in her chest, this pressing that flattens her into this one-dimensional shadow of a thing, is only something to be compartmentalized, boxed carefully away: sealed tightly along the edges, until there are no openings left. Openings are messy, dripping and leaking and setting free little wisps of emotion that have no place in this life she has chosen, accepted, embraced-

She is sorry, though, if he can believe that.

She runs.

* * *

This is what it feels like to be old: creaking in his joints and the faulty tick tick ticking of his heart in his chest, winding down toward eternity, and a thousand points of light above him, all adding up to nothing but a lot of goddamned flashing in his eyes.

He knew she'd leave him; he fucking _knew that_, didn't he? It's right in the goddamned manual: fellow SeeDs are not more important than the mission.

He is not more important to her than passing her exam, and he knew that too, all fucking _right_, but it doesn't mean it's not going to goddamned hurt.

If he were Squall, you can bet your fucking ass she wouldn't have left him behind.

You want to know something else his favorite instructor once said to him? Don't trust a single fucking woman who's not your mother.

And what's funny is that he didn't, for a long time, and then she pried him open and crawled inside and she has never stopped living there since, and maybe he doesn't trust her to do anything but smash him open and leave him bleeding on the pavement at her feet, but he still would have fucking _gone back_ and couldn't she have at least _pretended _to think about it-

But forget that.

That's past.

This is now and what's now is moving his ass out from underneath these scattered little pieces of lift strewn out around him in little shrapnel shards that pin him like a bug beneath its glass-front display, and somewhere just beyond his field of vision is a flickering, little smoking orange tongues that twist and coil and leap from immobile body to immobile body-

He pushes up with his one good hand, heaves; fucking _push_, asshole-

And just beyond his field of vision those little smoking orange tongues twist again, leap again-

He rocks himself onto one hip, hisses, stretches one hand instinctively down toward the fist-sized bulge in his shin, toward the fresh red flap of wound that draws back like lips over teeth, and now his fingertips find slippery white bone, molded into little irregular humps of compound fracture-

And somewhere just at the edge of those little smoking orange tongues there is a shifting, a peeling aside of shadows-

Hyperion has fallen just within reach of his fingers.

His one good hand is his off one, but he's practiced enough with both to know what he's doing, even if fighting with his left will always feel just a little bit wrong.

Lifting Hyperion is like shifting this entire column of warped steel off him with just his pinky, and whose bright fucking idea was it anyway, to make these things so goddamned _heavy_-

Something seizes him by the collar of his trench coat, and he is suddenly wrenched so hard everything becomes white flashbulb and red afterimage, and holding onto Hyperion as he vomits off to one side takes everything he has, everything he _is_, and now he is wrenched again, bumped down against something that smells like blood and shit-

He vomits again.

Slick hot-acid bile in his throat and more white flashbulbs exploding, shaking themselves apart into bright white dust in front of his eyes-

"Got one?"

"Yeah- he's the only one still alive in there."

"Can we use him as a hostage?"

"Not against SeeDs- they'll just shoot him. Take him somewhere out of the way and interrogate him. His leg's busted up pretty bad; you can start there. See if you can find out how many of them we're up against, how they fight- anything useful. Do it fast."

* * *

"SeeD Trepe-" The cadet standing to her left lowers his binoculars from his smoke-watering eyes and tilts his head uncertainly toward her, and now there is a sudden sinking inside her, a folding, because she already knows by the look on his face that she is not going to like what he has to say.

"SeeD Almasy's been taken. Two Dollet soldiers just dragged him out of the lower levels. He's still alive."

She stretches out one hand. "Not for long."

Standard procedure is a quick execution if extraction is not an option, one clean shot to the head before the SeeD in question can give up anything incriminating, and now as the cadet hands her his gun she swallows, braces herself, sights down along the barrel into the scope: killing him will hurt, but only for a moment, and she can take that- she has been trained to take every little hurt and simply let it be consumed, burned away by training that will fold it up inside her until it is so small she can no longer feel it prickling her heart.

She squints both eyes, steadies her hand-

Sometimes there is a shifting inside her, a slight give, and this shifting unroots something, sets it free, and if she is self-destructive enough to catch the pieces of it, what she is left holding is a little snapshot, a shard of memory almost as sharp as all the angles and edges she has carved herself into. She is something to be broken against and not shattered herself, and it is Garden that did this for her, Garden that took her in and made her something better, and it is Garden who wants her to kill this man, who _demands _she do it, for the good of the institution as a whole-

She remembers one of these shards drifting about inside of her, being blown around like a feather, but mostly she remembers the _smell _of it: hot summer beach and fresh line-hung sheets and a boy's ocean-scented hair-

And the scope jumps, shivers itself just slightly off to one side-

The moment of explosion is full of sensation: gold-glinting spiral of heat-ticking brass and gunpowder smoke and recoil that jams its hot white fingers into all the bones of her forearm, vibrating them, and now another explosion behind her plucks the rest of her like a string, and she is all vibration now: one collective throbbing like the beat beneath her chest bones, pounding its thunderstorm rhythm into her sternum.

Hot wet dust becomes soft red rainfall in the air, but she is used to this: live grenades and the pieces of her comrades painting themselves like glitter into her hair are simply reality, more shards to be collected and shut away into all her little boxes.

The cadet beside her picks himself back up, trembling, and she says calmly, "I missed," and guides the gun back into his shaking hand. "Hold the hill."

"What about-"

"I'm going down to get him." She is not actually aware of this decision until the words are already out of her mouth, and as soon as they are spoken, she is again reminded of flying, of gliding: something inside of her is rattled loose, shaken free, and what's funny is how very very _light _she feels-

"But what about-"

"I said hold the hill. Don't give any ground, but wait until I'm back to advance. They took him hostage to interrogate him. If he gives anything away, we're done. They already outnumber us."

He looks so young, underneath all his layers of blood and dirt and the little gleaming pieces of cadets less lucky than he.

She used to think that she would make someone a good mother, that this softening inside of her that unfurls itself into a gentle smile across her lips would be perfect for nurturing, for bandaging knees and kissing cuts and bending over stoves from which billow the soft warm-yeast scent of baking bread.

That was before she slit her first throat.

She still remembers the precise angle of the blade: press the tip to the carotid and slide down and across, always from behind, but mostly what she remembers is how very long she went around afterward, not feeling.

She smiles again at the boy, lightly grips him by the shoulder, and the squeeze she presses down into this frail bird-bone arm beneath her fingers lasts a moment too long, because she has been at this long enough to know a survivor from someone who will not make the cut, and what is missing in his eyes is that extra _something_, that ability to disconnect and worry about hooking everything back up later when feeling will not get him killed.

"You'll be fine," she assures him, and turns away.

Far below, Seifer is dragged out of her sight.

She unclips her whip from her belt.

* * *

There is the incoming whistle of hot steel-jacketed death traveling faster than sound and then a soft sucking, a swallowing, and the soldier crouching on his left shoots little wet red paint droplets from his eyes and onto Seifer's awkwardly-bent right hand, and now he rocks up on his toes, folds forward, and the ragged fist-sized exit hole flips itself up toward the sky as his head flops down across Seifer's stomach, spattering more of those little wet red paint droplets.

"_Shit_!"

He is seized by his bad leg.

"_Cocksuckerfuckgoddamnedcunt_whore_-_"

His fingers uncramp themselves in one convulsive unfurling that snaps his hand just wide enough to grab Hyperion again, and a clench of his teeth and one ragged exhalation through his nostrils scissors them just barely shut around the handle, and fuck _shit _his goddamned hand hurts-

He is dragged off the pathway into the scrub and rocks beyond, and as the remaining soldier twists his head around to say something, the asshole gets seven inches of mirror-shining blade through the bottom of his chin, all the way up out the top of his skull.

He smacks his head when the guy goes down, and for just a moment his world is all swirling fireworks and distant earthquakes, shaking him apart into half a dozen separate little pieces: this is what he feels like, dismembered, disconnected, puppet limbs arranged all wrong along their strings.

He is too tired to vomit anymore.

His right hand pops itself wetly open around Hyperion, all his knuckles cracking like they are each their own little fire cracker, going off, and for this one moment of swirling fireworks and distant earthquakes that shatter and shake and shred him all apart, he kind of wants to fucking cry.

He is a right-handed gunbladist with a right hand that has been ground into bone dust and pulp, but it's not like anyone is coming back for him, which means he probably shouldn't fucking worry about it after all: he'll die of thirst among all this scrub and blood-flavored dust long before his ruined hand becomes an issue.

"Seifer!"

His head flops itself far enough over to see her coming, to watch her, whip in hand, sprinting her way down the pathway toward him, and his smile is all blood-smeared sand that cracks between his teeth, but it doesn't _matter_; it's not like he could stop it even if he wanted to, because who the fuck saw this coming-

She even looks worried.

She even _slides her fucking hands _gently under his head, like touching him is a privilege, like she's worried he will just collapse, thaw back into the ground underneath them both-

He can tell the precise moment she spots the little white tongue-tip of his shin bone poking out through his pants, because her face suddenly goes just as white, and now there is a pause, and this silence that suddenly springs up in between them is so fucking complete, so all-encompassing he thinks he can actually hear the pulse he sees twitching in the side of her neck. This moment is a bubble, him and her and nothing else: the shaking of the ground and the screaming of children dying too young and the hot wet mist that lays a film of red grease down over everything- this is all just white noise, background filler.

_She came back for him_.

He probably looks like a fucking idiot, because who the fuck would lie here with a crushed leg and an even more crushed hand, smiling like this, like he is actually godddamned _happy _to be here- but you know what, he _is_, and fuck it if that makes him a sap, a moron, because she could have left him to die and she didn't-

"I can't Cure your leg without setting it, Seifer."

"So set it," he says, and even breathing these words, letting them just barely hiss between his teeth, hurts like a bitch.

"I don't know how. If I Cure it and the bone isn't set properly, they'll have to re-break it once we get back to Garden and heal it all over again."

"Garden'll leave me here if I can't walk."

She's not nearly as stone fucking cold as she likes to believe: if you know how to look, you can see every little flicker of each decision she makes, and how they each affect her.

What she has decided right now is that he's right, and the time between this flicker of decision and one white hand stretching down toward his leg is so infinitesimal he almost misses it-

And then she presses his shin back into place with a wet pop that arches him screaming off the ground, and now the sky above him smears itself into abstract watercolor and he tips his head limply down to one side because he is suddenly not too tired to vomit again after all.

She slides her left hand out from underneath his head, and now both her hands find his slippery raw-meat leg and everything goes cold all the way down to the bone, like she has somehow found the exact center of Trabia and shoved the whole goddamned continent inside of him, and this re-forming, this knitting back together of bone and skin and exposed nerve endings is almost as painful as breaking the fucking thing in the first place.

She crouches over him with her whip across her thighs, frowning. "Seifer, look at me."

He's _trying_, goddammit: her voice swims down to him through layers of fog that cocoon him, that pull his brain apart into smoke-shreds of vague comprehension, and how is he supposed to fucking focus on anything when there is a goddamned _hammer _inside his head-

* * *

She has to use all of her upper body strength to lever him upright into her arms.

His head slaps itself limply down across her shoulder and now his right hand curls up on top of his thigh, hooked into a claw, all peppermint stick bones beneath frayed white knuckle skin.

And this is what undoes her, unfastens something deep inside of her: nothing is anchored anymore, and she can only reach out instinctively for something to hold onto, to ground her, and what she comes up gripping is his other hand, still intact.

If Garden can't fix his hand, he will never be the same again. He will lose all his edge, the extra something that puts him so far above and beyond any gunbladist that has been seen in decades not even Squall can quite keep up with him, and what will he do then, if he is no longer the fastest, the strongest, the _best_: he will be like a dancer with no legs, a singer without a voice-

For reasons she cannot understand, he is defined by this weapon lying in the dirt beside him. Hyperion is simply another part of his body, an extension, an extra limb: Hyperion is Seifer Almasy and Seifer Almasy is Hyperion; it is that simple.

She slides his broken hand carefully off his thigh, cushioning it with her own, like if he can't see it he won't know, will not wonder what exists beyond Garden for people like him, who are good but just not quite good enough; who do not know understand anything beyond destroying, and being destroyed in turn.

"Can you stand?" she asks, jostling him slightly.

"Well, it's not like I have any other fucking _choice_."

"Stay here, beside the path; we still have to breach the tower, and I need to be there for that. I'll come back to get you once the exam is over."

* * *

"_Fuck _no," he snarls, and does she really think he's just going to _sit _here on his _ass _while she rushes on ahead of him into blood-smoke and meat-stink and that flashing crashing thunderstorm of detonating grenades and chattering machine guns and wannabe SeeDs dying too fast, too soon- Seifer Almasy does not fucking _wait around to be rescued_ by anyone-

He is the _knight_, goddammit, not the princess.

He unfolds his legs underneath him, and it takes him a moment to lock them into place, to remind his knees how to click themselves back into the socket where they belong, and bending down to retrieve Hyperion is a little arthritic symphony that pop pop pops in his ear like those machine guns on top of that hill.

Right hand or no right hand, he remembers the basics, ok, _instructor_: stick them with the fucking pointy end until they don't get back up. There's no one here that can equal him with a blade, even broken as he is, so how about _she _wait here and he'll take care of that communication tower.

He is all adrenaline and anger anyway, and he needs somewhere to put this, a conduit, something to pour all of his rage and his fear and his disappointment into before he goes off like one of those grenades.

Right now, running is closer to falling: it is just a controlled fall, a leaning into the first stride, and then a fumbling underneath him, a dragging, but what it also feels like is fire: each leaning is a hammer stroke pounded into the very base of his foot that travels all the way up his shin into his thigh, only this hammer is pounding home little hot-acid flames instead of nails, and he wonders how much it will fucking unman him if he throws up in front of her again.

"_Seifer_," she snaps behind him, and there has always been something about his anger that just fucking turns him _on_: he is all lit up down to his toes, and now running isn't so hard after all-

Bet he can even beat her to the top of the hill.

* * *

The sky above her is all black-bruise cloud bank, roiling and boiling and collapsing in on itself until the sky is one long smoke-smear so thick she can't see the sun anymore.

Little acrid fingers of soot crawl down her throat, parch her tongue, and now swallowing is like being suffocated: hot wet heat in her mouth and branching off into her nostrils and stinging warm-salt tears from her eyes-

She can't see him anymore.

Calling out his name is pointless: her voice has been smothered, strangled down into a whisper she can't even hear herself-

But she can hear what she thinks is him: bell-tolling blades meeting, separating, jarring back up against one another, so fast the sounds all blend together, melt into one, the high screech of weapons coming together and the more subtle squeal of them pulling back once more-

The sound stops for just a moment, is taken up again, and she plunges through this gray storm front of smoke onto black-scorched grassland, and ahead of her he spins, back steps-

She forgets, sometimes, what it's like to watch him fight. Even left-handed, he is not so much a master as an artist: Hyperion moves so smoothly and quickly and flawlessly it is as though each thought, each decision to block or parry or thrust forward is already decided for him, has already been pre-determined, and he is merely following this choreographed series of movements like his limbs do not even belong to him anymore.

But another moment of watching and she sees a mistake, a fault in this otherwise faultless choreography: an over-correction, a stretching too far, and now this opens up his left side and bares all his ribs for the soldier just barely keeping up-

She sees the man lunge for it, reaches down inside herself, feels a tug, a _release_-

The man is swallowed, blasted away: Firaga lifts him off his feet and throws his broken-doll body down the hill behind him, and now Seifer turns to engage the next, and she watches his left leg buckle underneath him; Hyperion whistles up over his head as his opponent's blade whistles down toward him, and this joining is so brief she barely even sees it. His gunblade draws back like a viper, flicks back in just as quickly, and the man falls away to either side in two separate pieces.

She stretches down inside herself for another spell, lets it fly: the Dollet soldier to his left becomes another roiling black column of smoke.

"Squad B, regroup!" Instructor Brandeen screams, and Quistis rolls out from behind the boulder she has ducked momentarily behind, unfurls her whip, lets all its barbs uncurl into the thigh of the man across from her, and now she _yanks_, puts her back into it-

And he is suddenly a fountain, painting red the grass underneath him.

His femoral artery will empty itself in just a few minutes if he does not get immediate help, but she has never quite been comfortable with leaving anyone behind to suffer; the pistol on her hip makes its way into her hand, and drawing is all smoothly-honed instinct, an afterthought: its recoil is almost a surprise, and now his head kicks back against the ground as the pistol kicks back in her hand, and she holsters it once more, and keeps moving.

"Take them in, Trepe!"

"Sir!"

She unwinds her whip once more, lets it coil along the ground at her feet, adjusts her glasses on her nose: "Squad B; go in low. We're going to charge the gun turret. Hunter, you're on mag support; concentrate on the soldiers off to either side of the turret, so they don't pick us off on our way up there. This is a full frontal assault; go in hard, and go in fast."

She unravels a Blind from her stock, shoots its black-ink fog into one of the soldiers manning the turret on the top of the hill, blocking the little bridge behind them that empties directly out into the top level of the communication tower, and lifts her free hand over her head.

She curls all her fingers down into a fist, and locks it tight.

Hunter casts.

Squad B advances.

At their front, closest to the bridge, Seifer falters, picks himself back up, keeps running.

"Almasy! Pull back!" Brandeen hollers.

* * *

Fucking _pull back _his ass.

He charges.

Lifting Hyperion is like shouldering a fucking anvil; little fingers of blue-white electricity shove themselves down through his shoulder into the socket and the turret suddenly blurs, becomes desert heat mirage dissipating and rippling back into existence and vanishing all over again-

He stabs, slashes, whirls-

He ducks under the gun, pops up on the other side, carves one soldier a new fucking smile and another a fist-sized new hole to shit out of-

And the bridge is suddenly jolted beneath his feet, yanking him off balance, slamming him reeling back into the gun-

* * *

"Oh _shit_," Brandeen snaps beside her. "_Pull back_; fucking _pull back_!"

Arachnid-jointed limbs click click tick their way onto the bridge between hill and communication tower, and another ground-quaking step forward and Seifer slides down the gun onto the bridge beneath its limbs, and into her throat her heart goes-

"What are they doing with one of the X-ATMs?" Hunter yells, letting fly a Blizzara that tilts the thing's head around with a nails-on-chalkboard screech that flinches Seifer back against the gun, and what is he doing just _lying _there- she disobeyed _orders _to go after him-

Hyperion flashes out, arcs up, carves halfway into one of the machine's legs and hangs up in the circuitry there-

"I don't know; they must have re-programmed it. We don't have enough support to take it down-" The radio clipped to Brandeen's belt hisses suddenly, cutting him off, and he ducks down behind a boulder as he unhooks it, but she is still standing, rooted-

"Seifer _move_-"

* * *

He does.

His bad leg gives underneath him as he scrambles to his feet, but Hyperion is an anchor, a fulcrum for him to kick off, and he does this too, pushing up, letting go-

The thing about his legs is that even with one of them half-crippled underneath him, he is one hell of a fucking jumper: he has spent hours upon hours in Garden's gym building them up, packing muscle down tight over the bones of his thighs, and one good leg is enough to shoot him up, to propel him-

He cramps himself into the space beneath its fourth leg, grits his teeth, plants a boot, jerks Hyperion free with another squeal that hurts his fucking head-

* * *

What is he _doing_-

* * *

Matron once told him he could do anything he put his mind to.

She only told him that because he tried to climb the highest tree at the edge of the beach and fell, skinning his knee, and reassuring him that he wasn't some kind of pathetic little failure was just her way of drying his tears that much faster, but the thing she doesn't know is that he took that to heart, just like he did everything else she ever told him, and what's more is that he _believes _it:

He is Seifer Almasy and he _can _do anything he puts his fucking mind to, goddammit, and this piece of shit is going down.

"Almasy, _pull back_,"

He wonders what his odds of passing this exam are after ignoring two direct orders in a row.

He doesn't care.

It is him and this thing and Hyperion in his fingers, and _fuck _his shattered hand and his improperly-patched leg; see how much they slow him down, see how much _he gives a shit_, and watch _this_, Trepe-

He bets her precious limp-dicked Squall Leonhart with his fucking fruity fur jacket hasn't got this in him.

He leaps again.

* * *

She cannot seem to close her mouth.

He holds Hyperion awkwardly in his ruined right hand and pulls himself up onto the top of the X-ATM with his left, rolling as it lifts itself onto its hind legs, and as he uncoils, straightens fully upright, Hyperion flashes, comes down like a hammer-

* * *

Sparks come apart around him into hot white dust like glitter in the sky and he _stabs_, pushes down, down fucking _down_-

He is airborne.

Landing is all talons of wood-splintered boards that hook into his cheek and do not let go, and a forward shoulder roll is just barely enough to save him from breaking his neck, and now he hits the bridge running, _sprinting_-

* * *

She starts back toward him as Brandeen shoots out from behind his cover, her boots sucked down into soft marshmallow mud, swallowed-

"_Pull back_, Squad B. We've been given the withdraw order. We will regroup down at the beach."

"What about Seifer?"

"Almasy is the one who decided to be a hero and take on an ATM all on his own. He can dig himself out of his own shit; I'm not wasting any time or SeeDs on him. We've already taken heavy losses."

She turns to watch him, winding her fingers tighter and tighter around the whip in her hand, digging all the points off her chewed-off nails into soft slick-grease leather, letting her breath become a pause, a single little flutter inside her lungs that just barely touches her lips, and that is what this entire moment comes down to, a breath, a heartbeat: she is all soft exhalation and breastbone drumming beneath skin that feels too hot, and _run faster_, you stupid man-

"_Now_, Trepe!"

She lingers for just one moment longer, feeling the breath in her chest and the butterfly quivering of her pulse in her fingertips, and it is like this moment sucks her down into it, drowns her-

He reaches the end of the bridge as the X-ATM picks itself back up and shakes itself off-

"_Trepe_!" Brandeen hollers again, and turning is not so much a conscious decision as something primal, instinctive: the ground thunders underneath her and the sky thunders up above her and out of the corner of one eye she sees that bad leg falter beneath him, kick itself out into a little skid that takes him down, and now the ground leaps again, rips itself out from underneath her feet-

She tumbles headfirst down the hill, letting her body carry itself into the motion naturally, chin to chest, and now the world around her is all kaleidoscope blur, a carousel: green/gray/brown and back to green again, and she is back on her feet once more before the spinning even stops.

He throws himself down the hill after her.

His fall is not quite so neat: he is preceded by cursing so loud it outpaces him, hurls itself down the hill in front of him, and again the ground roars-

Underneath those arachnid-jointed limbs rocks explode into powder, and she is suddenly aware that she has one hand around his elbow, jerking him back onto his feet. "_Run_."

Shiva rips herself so violently free that for a moment Quistis is overcome with the sensation, with the _loss_: she has been amputated, torn open and left bleeding out-

There is a shattering, tinkling glass rainfall-

"_Move_!" Seifer screams, and now it is he half-carrying her, and she has no choice but to leave Shiva, this piece of herself, far behind.

* * *

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck _shit shit shit_-

Run you motherfucking _asshole _keep fucking _going_-

Trepe's got him by a stride thanks to this goddamned _leg _of his, but the nice thing about adrenaline is just how much it will do for you, when it's balls-to-the-fucking-wall or nothing.

He runs until he is nothing but rubber limbs and cloth knees, until he is all rubber and cloth: a rag doll man, breathing acid, exhaling fire.

He squeezes out another breath, hammers down another step, shifts Hyperion a little higher on his shoulder-

The street beneath his jackhammer boots quivers, shifts-

And the bridge that flashes over their heads so fast he almost misses it quivers similarly, begins to fracture, star, unglue itself along the seams-

Out of the corner of one eye, he watches one of those arachnid limbs become an executioner's axe, tearing down through steel and glass and rubber like they are tissue paper, and he fucking _runs_: forget his faulty lungs and his even more faulty leg and his hand of powder and pulp and everything that is not one foot in front of the other, as fast as he can make them go-

* * *

The beach unfurls itself in front of her and she _leaps_, rolls, comes up breathing sand and dust and little particles of matter she does not want to think about, and in front of her is the assault boat, gleaming in the sun that has finally parted this curtain of smoke-haze above her-

The pursuit of the ATM is as consistent as her heartbeat: _tick tick tick tick click_, little scurrying steps in the dirt, crushing everything underneath them into soft white-sand residue-

She runs faster.

* * *

The fucking boat is _leaving without him_; that goddamned _cocksucker _Brandeen is trying to fucking _kill _him-

He does not so much jump from dune to beach as sort of stumble over the side, ass-over-teakettle, and now he comes up spitting sand and his leg is on fucking _fire _and his lungs are burning even hotter and if that thing leaves without him he swears on his left goddamned fucking _nut _he will see that fucker eating his own dick before the day is out-

Quistis reaches the boat, and for just a moment the hand inside his lungs unsnarls itself, lets completely loose, and he can _breathe _again-

And then his world is jarred again, shattered into fragments, and he falls, jerks himself back up, is sucked up into hot hurricane blowback from the engines on that assault boat-

* * *

She climbs the ladder to the gun turret so fast she barely even feels her hands touch the rungs: it is like she just hovers, skims herself absently over the surface of it, and now her fingers close around steel so cold it burns and the head of that turret cocks itself back, swivels-

She braces her feet against the pegs, locks her muscles, and now her world is all firecracker explosions in her ears, little red-orange bursts of pyrotechnics-

* * *

Trepe hoses the fucking thing.

This scene is chicken-choking material for sure, because what a goddamned _woman_-

The beach erupts around him, hot brass-reek in his nose and sizzling circuits and this Hyne-awful _wailing_, a screeching, and behind him he hears the thing fold forward with a rusty hinge-squeak of crumpling metal exoskeleton-

And in front of him the beach is painted midnight-shadow and _shit fuck shit _get out of the way get out _of the goddamned way_-

* * *

All the tendons in her forearms are consumed by hot white flame, and this hot white flame steals its way into her throat and seals off her voice and creeps its way down inside her chest until she is all flame, a column-

She swings the muzzle around, squeezes down on both the triggers, watches little metal gears and antennae and blinking red lights fly away like birds taking wing-

* * *

He leaps.

There is enough of a gap between shore and boat that he is not sure he is going to make it.

But for just a moment, he is completely airborne, weightless, _free_, and if he could just be held here in this moment, suspended-

He feels his tags shift against his throat and Hyperion shift in his hand and inside his bad leg all his bones seem to grind themselves together, to separate, like the adhesive that is Quistis' Cure spell has just given out-

Cold salt-spray on his cheeks and between his lips and inside his lungs and maybe he _has _been trapped here in this moment, forever, him in this bubble and the rest of the world going on without him-

And then his shoulder hits the edge of the lower deck and he rolls, lets go of Hyperion, watches it skid away, throwing sparks-

The doors hiss shut behind him and the ocean churns underneath him, and he is carried away into darkness.

* * *

She watches the shoreline recede, and sags down against the turret.

* * *

Galbadia Garden

Galbadia

There is a moment between sleep and wake when you are immersed in both, when you are not quite submerged in either, and it is during this moment, this balancing point, that he almost remembers.

He is not quite sure what he almost remembers.

There is something about a boy alone in the rain, afraid to be alone, and there is something about sand and sea and waves that hiss like laughter on yellow-summer shores-

And then that balancing point is tipped, shifted, and he spills into consciousness and pries his eyes open to see only his spartan little box of a room and Lionheart's case, trapping the sunlight that filters in through his blinds.

Sometimes he wonders if all memories are trapped in this moment between sleep and wake, frozen there, and accessing them is like unlocking a combination: spin the dial just right, learn a secret. Click past the correct number, and be left forever wondering.

The boy has been suctioned away into bright white light so many times he's not sure he even really exists, but the _impression _of him is still there, and it is sharp, and sometimes at night it keeps him permanently pinned between cream-colored ceiling tiles and soft black oblivion, falling into neither.

None of this is really any of his concern. If there is a boy, if there is something he needs to say, he can say it to someone else; he has better things to do with his time than to listen.

The clock on his nightstand ticks, turns over another hour, and he is not dissolved into dream smoke and memory and there is no brightening of the sky outside his window, and he thinks about how damn _slowly _this night is moving.

He watches Lionheart's case catch moonlight, hold onto it, and he wonders if this set-up is the same one Seifer has arranged in his room, his gunblade so close he does not even have to roll out of bed to draw it.

They brought him in on a stretcher earlier this afternoon.

Maybe that is why the boy hasn't come to visit him yet: he can't unlock the combination because his head is so full of limp fingers dangling over clot-crusted sheets that he can't see anything else; because groping down around inside of himself for anything else is pointless; because his head is packed full of whispers about crushed legs and even more crushed hands-

It's not that he feels sorry for the guy.

It's that he understands about the weapon, being a part of it, wielding it like it's your own limb, and because he understands this, he understands what it would feel like to lose that.

Like being thrown, he imagines, so hard and high and fast you don't know if you will ever come down again; you're just left to find your own way back, to figure out how to exist in a place you have never seen before, where nothing makes sense.

Seifer still has his left hand, of course, but the thing about that ruined hand is that a crippled SeeD is not a SeeD at all, but a liability: it's when they start to break down that it's time to get rid of them, but where do you even _go_, after Garden?

Exile from Garden, he sometimes thinks, would be even worse than death.

At least when you die, there is a precise place for you to be, a way to go, whether you believe it's beneath the ground or up into the sky.

A sudden pounding on his door shoots him upright in bed, his hand already halfway into the space between bunk and blade-

"Curfew check," a voice outside in the hallway says, and he relaxes. His door is whisked aside, and there is one quick nod of a head, taking him in as it dips in and slips back out again, and now the door seals itself shut, locks him away-

This dormitory is a tomb.

He clicks his eyes over toward the clock and then back up over his head and along the ceiling above him are five horizontal cracks and eight vertical ones, and he goes back to counting each little chip in them, every imperfection, and he thinks about how much like fighting this is: You spend so much time looking for a flaw, a weakness, that sooner or later, the errors are all you see.

He wonders what it is people see when they look at him.

It's not like he _cares._ It's just, what else is there to think about at midnight, when he is supposed to be made up of falling, of drifting down through all these different layers until one sucks him in, holds him tight, until he blows apart into nothing and is put back together by morning sunlight through half-open blinds.

The clock ticks.

His foot taps against the railing of his bunk.

He clicks his eyes from ceiling to wall, from wall to ceiling.

In the end, he does not sleep at all.


	3. Interlude One

**A/N: For those of you who read my last fic, this interlude is going to look familiar. Be aware, however, that these interludes are going to play out a bit differently than they did in Witch. Most of them are going to basically be short little one-shots, and will fill in backstory that is continuously alluded to in the main story. I decided to fill in some blanks with interludes instead of flashbacks; you guys will see where I'm going with this as we move along. I apologize in advance for Seifer's spelling. **

Deer Quisty,

Matron made me rite that part cuz she says that's how your saposed to 'addresess' a leter. But it's not true cuz your just a stupid old smelly girl so your not 'deer' your just bossy smelly Quisty.

I'm doing really gud without you. Matron gives me all the cookies now, cuz your not here anymore so I don't have to share. I bet you're new family doesn't give you any cookies cuz your ugly and stupid.

Matron made me cross that out cuz she cot me riting it and siad it was meen. But it's true. Neway, I bet you miss me, witch is gross cuz I don't like smelly ugly girls with cooties, but I no you can't help yourself cuz Matron siad I'm 'hansom' and all the girls are gonna want me and stuff like that one time Selphie dared you to kiss me so I pushed her in the water cuz I didn't want cootie infestatations.

I found a crab the other day and killed it with my sword. Wen I did that it reminded me of you're face so I killed it again, cuz I'm glad your gone and I don't wanna be thinking about you're face.

Talk to you later

Seifer

P.S. are you ever gonna come bak an vizit?

* * *

Dear Seifer,

Please find enclosed your correspondence from the 21st of last month with all corrections made. Your spelling is abhorrent.

Sincerely,

Quistis

* * *

Deer Quisty,

Wat did you call me?!

It's me,

Seifer

* * *

Dear Seifer,

'Abhorrent' is an adjective, not a noun.

Ab-hor-rent [_ab hor rent_]:

1. Repugnant: arousing strong feelings of disapproval or repugnance

It was only an observation; I was simply commenting on your complete and utter literary incompetence, not attempting to indulge in childish name-calling. That's _your _department.

Please give this letter to Matron. She'll be glad to know that I am doing well; my new parents are very kind to me. Have the flowers we planted last spring bloomed yet?

Sincerely,

Quistis

* * *

Deer Quisty,

Im not giving your leter to Matron cuz she doesn't care anyway just like i don't care and i bet your new parents are stupid cuz they'd have to be to adopt _you_. They shud hav piked _me_. Gurls are stoopid with thier stoopid cooties and their stoopid faces.

Matron sed no one's piked me yet cuz she won't let them cuz I'm her favrit.

You din't anser my last leter. Are you gonna' come back?

Im still beter then you even if your stupid new parents piked you instead,

Seifer

* * *

Dear Seifer,

I haven't heard from you in a while. It's not that I miss you (and certainly not your spelling), of course…I just want to know how Matron and Cid are doing. Are they well? It would be nice to see them again.

Sincerely,

Quistis

* * *

Deer Quisty,

Matron and cid r doin real gud cuz your not hear nemore. Im still doing gud two.

I cot a bug today.

Do you think the uther kids wander wat hapened to us? I bet your still thinking about them even tho they al got new parents yeers ago. That's stoopid.

Matron told me I waz saposed to sine this love Seifer but that's _gross_,

Seifer

* * *

Dear Seifer,

Today I talked to Matron on the phone. She said you and Cid were in an automobile collision and you broke your arm.

I hope you're feeling better.

I made you something yesterday. I shouldn't have…you'll probably just throw it away, or break it, or make fun of it…but I don't have any brothers or sisters here. I would have sent it to Squall, of course, but I don't know what happened to him, so you can have it instead. I hope…I hope you like it.

Sincerely,

Quistis

* * *

Deer Quisty,

I was reely brave wen I broak my arm. I din't cry or nething. i saved a dog two. It was in the rode an another car amost ranned it over so i jumped out rite in front of the car and grabed the dog befour the car culd hit it and now everywon thinks I'm a hero. I told you I wuz gonna be one.

I don't want nething stupid squall wuz saposed to get and sides it's a _girl _present neway so I gave it to matron and she like it even tho she shuldn't have cuz it's reely stupid. I culd do a beter drawing.

Is that wat your new howse reely looks like?

Sincerely,

(I corssed that one out cuz Matron rote it)

Seifer

* * *

Dear Seifer,

I'm not going to give my foster mother this letter to send because you'll just make fun of me, but I don't have anyone else to tell.

I miss the orphanage; it's so lonely here.

I don't think my new parents like me very much.

Maybe you were right. Maybe no one will like me. No one at school seems to; there are these two popular girls, Mandy and Heather, who called me a 'teacher's pet' the other day and made fun of me when Mrs. Gramm wasn't looking, and everyone laughed. I was so embarrassed, and now no one will sit with me at lunch or play with me at recess.

At least you always played with me.

Sometimes I'm so lonely I almost miss _you_.

Please take care of Matron and Cid. I know you love them even if you try to pretend you don't care.

Sincerely,

Quistis

* * *

_Dear _Quistis,

I havn't heard from you in three months. Matron's been halping me with my speling so now you can't be a stupid little snob about how much _beter _you are then me just be_cause _you reed books. I could reed books if I wanted to I just don't be_cause _their stupid.

Matron went to visit cribaby Zell today. She told me he was doing reely good even tho I didn't care.

…How are you doing?

Sincerely, (I only wrote it this time because Matron tot me how to spel it so I thought you shuld no how smart I am)

Seifer

* * *

Dear Quisty,

It's been six months now. Are you're new parents meen like the ones in that story Matron told us about the evil stepmother and the sisters? I bet they won't let you rite to me anymore because if they did you would because you miss me.

Today I made a sord out of some duck tape and Matron sed I looked like a real knight.

Rite back,

Seifer

* * *

Dear Quisty,

Whare are you? It's been a yeer. I know you miss me. Why aren't you writing?

Write me back or _else_,

Seifer

* * *

Dear Quisty,

Please write back.

I promise I'll be nice.

Sincerely,

Seifer


	4. Chapter Two

**A/N: Hello again all and thank you very much for your reviews and your support. I hope you enjoy this next update. This chapter is dedicated, as promised, to Arisa K, for not being satisfied with the little measly non-violent heart attack I originally planned on giving Cid. Also, the poem Irvine is reading is Wind and Window Flower, by Robert Frost.**

**Chapter Two**

Galbadia Garden

Galbadia

She stands looking at the bulletin board with all the rows upon rows of paper names that are not hers, feeling nothing.

She has been emptied, unstoppered: drained out onto the floor beneath her boots.

She floats away.

She no longer walks; her feet barely skim the floor as she makes her way numbly step by step back to her dorm, as she makes her way clip by clop by bootheel click to her bed, to its perfectly creased blankets and its perfectly plumped pillow and the soft white glow of the sun through her window.

She sits carefully on the edge of this perfectly-pleated bed, disturbing nothing.

* * *

Three musically electronic dings; a white-static crackle.

Her name is announced over the intercom.

Something breaks loose in her chest and stuffs itself into her throat, and breathing is suddenly one solid mass, a single fixed point in her lungs.

* * *

She shifts in her seat across from Headmaster Martine, folds her hands, carefully releases her fingers, folds them again, and what is she even supposed to _do _with them-

He does not even look at her. He pages through the file open across his desk in front of him without a word, without a sound, and her heartbeat is so loud inside her ears that she cannot hear anything else: she is all pulse now, a thunderstorm beat, endless ocean roar.

She swallows.

She presses her hands palm-down into the upholstery of the chair underneath her and it suctions to her fingers, squelches audibly free, and she wonders how many others have sat here before her, how many more students will come after her, pushing their sweaty fingers down flat alongside even more sweaty thighs-

_Say something_.

Martine flicks one of the papers in the file, pages it aside, clears his throat.

Say something _please _how long is she expected to just _sit here_-

"I would like to congratulate you on your acceptance into our instructor program."

She blinks.

Blinks again.

Looks down at her fingers.

There are ten of them, just as she thought: pale, slender, whip-scarred and ugly: a soldier's fingers and not a woman's, and she flexes them, watches the knuckles ripple, the keloid humps of old breaks bulge up under skin like sea monsters breaking the surface-

"Ex-excuse me?"

"You're in, Quistis. You passed."

"I don't- I didn't see my name on the rosters…I thought-"

He brings his eyes up from the file in front of him and she flinches back just slightly, digs her nails into the armrests of the chair underneath her, and for just one eternal moment he pins her, thrusts his sharp cold-winter eyes through her chest and _holds _her, so tightly she can barely even twitch her foot.

"Your name wasn't on the roster because your new status comes with some stipulations." He tents both hands on the folder. "You've always been an exemplary student; there is no doubt you are one of the most accomplished SeeDs G. Garden has ever seen. You passed your SeeD exam with flying colors. You've shown excellent leadership qualities out in the field, both during the recent exam as well as every SeeD mission I have ever sent you on. I don't doubt that you would make an excellent instructor."

_However_.

She waits for this one word with her breath iced over inside her chest, frozen into concrete inside her lungs, and if he just knew how quickly she would take _back _whatever it is that has put this black mark on her record- if he can just understand how _important _this is to her-

"You were ordered to pull back during the assault by the X-ATM, to leave Seifer Almasy behind. Instructor Brandeen had to repeat this order to you, and reports that you initially tried to argue with him. You then stayed behind to help Almasy, instead of proceeding immediately to the beach, where your team was to assemble."

Seifer- of _course _it comes back to Seifer; why can't he stop interfering;why can't he just leave her life to her-he _never listens_-

Her career, her entire _life _cannot come down to this, a moment of split second insanity, of second guessing- she doesn't even _like him_- he would have never gone back for _her_-

"Sir, I-"

He holds up one hand and now his eyes cut into her again, scythe through all her protests, and she shuts her mouth abruptly.

"It's not your job to save your fellow SeeDs. Your job is the mission. You go in, you do what you're ordered to, and if you have to leave someone behind, you leave someone behind. SeeDs are valuable, but not so valuable that they're not expendable. What you did could have cost us two soldiers instead of one. Almasy chose to disregard orders, which is to be expected of him, considering his history. You, however, Quistis, have always understood the importance of following through, of putting the mission above all else, and that is what makes you a leader, an example. Don't get tangled up with Almasy. He's extremely skilled, but he's a wild card."

She opens her mouth, shuts it again, folds both hands quietly in her lap.

"You'll be on a short probationary period- a month, no more, as long as everything works out. You will assist Instructor Marks in Unarmed Combat 101, and if he's satisfied with your performance, you will then take over the class. He plans to retire in a few months, and we need someone to replace him. In the afternoons, you will teach Battle Strategy 302 once your probationary period is up."

She can't speak; something crawls up her throat and floods into her mouth, and is this what relief tastes like, this burning in her throat and this even hotter smoldering in her eyes-

"Thank you, sir." She holds her voice so firmly in hand it does not shake even a little.

What she wants to do is kiss him, throw herself across the desk between them and just…_embrace _him; she has never failed at anything before and she came so _close _and does he understand that she _can't fail- _she doesn't know _how_: what is even _beyond _failure, for people like her?

He shuts the folder in front of him. "When you have earned full Instructor status, you will be awarded Rank A." He pauses with his hands on that cream-colored sheaf, and his eyes are sharp once more, skewers to pin her wriggling underneath. She wishes he would not look at her like that, like she is an uncovered well and he can see all the way down inside of her, and the urge to cover herself, to bring both hands up like a shield across her chest, is so tangible she can almost taste it mixed in with the relief. She taps one foot nervously, stills the motion with one hand hooked into a claw against her thigh, and she looks out over his shoulder, to the window behind him, to neutral smoke-gray skies and hills with no end, and she lets something small and soft and frail unfurl itself inside her, a tiny plea of a thing, a prayer-

_-_don't let him take this _back _he can't _take this away from her-_

"You understand that Almasy is much lower-ranking than you?"

She blinks again. "Yes. He's-"

"C-rank, thanks to an incident a few months back that nearly got him booted from Garden altogether. He was barely eligible to take the instructor exam, and Hyne only knows why he wanted to; he only applied himself in class just enough to barely pass the written SeeD exam. I don't need to tell you he has continued to display excessive disciplinary problems during his years here at Garden."

He doesn't need to tell anyone that; Seifer violates rules more often than he breaks the aching young hearts of the new cadets who inevitably (and implausibly) fall for his non-existent charm. (She supposes she can see the appeal of a bad boy- every romance novel ever penned would have one believe that they can be changed, molded anew, after all, but he is sandpaper, uneven, coarse -_rude_- a thing to be chafed against but never broken through.)

"Fraternization between higher-ranking SeeDs -particularly instructors- and low-level SeeDs is strictly forbidden."

She wrinkles her eyebrows together. "Yes, sir; I'm well aware of that."

He unlaces his hands and leans back in his chair, and there is still something predatory about his eyes, a _watching _that makes her feel underdressed, stripped, and she adjusts the pleats of her skirt because she is not sure where else to put her hands, what else she can make them do.

"Good. Dismissed."

* * *

At night when he shuts his eyes to sleep, he watches his father die, and it goes like this:

The office is cold. (Yeah- he remembers that; it was freeze-your-fucking-balls cold, and he had on just this thin fucking shirt and pants more hole than denim, and that motherfucker Cid watching him like that, so closely, made him feel even more cold, all the way down to his goddamned toes.)

Cid wants to know the whole story, the _real _story, but this particular story is wrapped up in secrets that are not his to share, so he keeps his mouth fucking shut and he watches Cid's lips become a puckered little wound of a gash in his face, and he sits in his chair saying nothing, staring out the window.

It's morning outside, just. He remembers (this is the part he never forgets, if you want to know the truth) that Quistis once explained a sunrise to him like this: dawn is a new beginning, another chance, but only if you don't let it pass you by- only if you understand what it is you're seeing, what it is you're being offered, and if you're not careful, every new chance and alternate beginning will just roll on by, leave you behind, and it's when you run out of sunrises that you know it's really all over: death is not so much an absence of life as it is an absence of _light_, and when that light goes, it takes you with it. (She read that in a book and thought it was nice and was stupid enough to share it with him, even after he'd just shit all over some poem she'd taken the time to read aloud to him. Truth? He thought it was kinda' nice too and made sure to be extra goddamned mean just to prove his dick hadn't been stolen away in the night by the penis gremlins Zell used to be convinced were camped out under his bed.)

The staring contest between him and Cid lasts a very long time, but he is fourteen and puberty is on his side and he can exude 'edgy asshole' with the best of them, and he is not _ten _anymore, old man.

He is not your little boy anymore.

He is no one's little boy. (He remembers, the way the rest of them do not, that he used to be, that once upon a time he had not one, not two, but three mothers and just as many fathers, which makes him luckier than many, he supposes, except the first set died prematurely and left him all alone, and the second set gave him away like he was a fucking heirloom to be passed along, and the third he'd really rather just fucking forget about, if you don't mind.)

Cid clears his throat.

He stares at the clock over his father's head. (And why is it _this _man who is always father? What about the one who came before? What about him, huh? A quiet man with a quieter smile who loved his wife and child and came home every leave, without fail, in a uniform stained with war, until one day the uniform came home without him.)

It's funny, but you never notice just how _long _a minute lasts until you see it click through each second, watch a fading black hand tick and tick and tick until that tick becomes a solid tock, and it _resonates_, it really fucking does, rings you all the way down to the bone.

This watching is the only way to stop time, he's found. There is a moment right after that solid tock when the air goes still and your heart stops beating, just for a second, and everything is frozen, hovering, teetering on the edge of anticipation, and then something gives, shifts, and the whole thing tumbles down around you, and suddenly it is one minute and one second, and you can breathe again. (That's how he survived Cid's eyes and Cid's concerned questions and Cid's little exasperated sighs- counting those minutes, living in those moments; forgetting how to breathe and then remembering all over again. You need some kind of distraction, after all, when someone keeps asking you why you tried to kill your foster father and won't accept 'Would you believe he tried to make me fucking eat _Marshmallow Peeps?!_' as a viable excuse.)

It takes Cid fifty-five minutes and twenty-three seconds to give up, to slide himself back behind his desk and flip a folder open across the keyboard of his computer, and now something relaxes infinitesimally inside him, and he tears his eyes away from the clock.

He wants to know where they took Quistis.

He just needs to be sure that she's _safe_. (It's somewhere around this point that his eyes start to flicker, that he decides sleep is a slippery little bitch who is going to be a real whore about this whole 'restorative REM cycle' thing, but y'know, the thing is, once he starts seeing it he can't _stop_, so he might as well put his feet up and enjoy the show.)

Cid doesn't talk to him for a very long time, which is fucking _fine _with him, except that the man's fingers tack tack tack away at that keyboard like a thousand little machine guns firing simultaneously, and the sound's driving him goddamned _nuts _and cut the _shit_, where'd they _take her_-

He presses his hands together between his knees.

He remembers this one day back at the orphanage when Zell dared him to kiss Quistis. He never turned down a dare because he was just that much braver, that much _better _than all the rest of them, so he ran away to find her and there she was sitting on the front porch, book in her lap, sun in her hair, and something snagged in his chest and hung up in his throat and it took him three hiccupping gasps for air to realize it was his breath, and that was when he first _understood_.

You don't fall in love; you crash right fucking through it, tearing skin, breaking bones- it felt worse than that nosedive he took from the treehouse Irvine and Zell built with their own two special ed hands and an old hammer of Cid's they never did fess up to taking, and he just couldn't believe it was this bossy little _brat _wielding this kind of power over him-

He punched her in the shoulder, and then he stepped on her book, and when she was done crying, she reciprocated so hard he went around hiding his left eye for a week underneath a pirate patch. (He made up a name- something real catchy like Captain Zellpeeshimself or The Dread Pirate God, and there was some kind of story to go along with it- something about how he'd lost the eye saving a princess from a dragon and the dragon who ate his eyeball got a stomachache from it, so he'd probably be getting that eye back anytime soon now. Selphie ruined the whole goddamned thing with her big fucking mouth, but forget that: the titty twister he gave Chicken Wuss more than made up for any lame-ass nicknames the little shit tried to make stick.)

He was ten; give him a break.

He is four years older now, four years wiser, and he gets that never seeing her again is going to leave behind a hole, he fucking _admits it_, all right, but he can live with that, if she's going to be ok.

Is she going to be ok?

He can't ask that, understand. He might not get the answer he needs.

"Seifer-" That's the first word Cid says to him in over an hour, and he never gets to reach the end of his sentence.

There's this…presence. He doesn't know what to call it, doesn't understand why he is suddenly even colder, why he suddenly can't _move_, but there's something here that wasn't before, and he sees this rippling near the half-open door, and this rippling becomes a breeze, stirs a poster on the wall and the hair on his neck-

And the door slams and all the papers on Cid's desk fly up into the air and are held aloft by something else he can't see, little whirring snowflakes white as salt, circling, circling-

He's not a coward- understand that. He's _not_. He held a knife to the throat of a man twice his size and then, when the man didn't stop, when he didn't fucking believe this pretty little blonde-haired brat of a boy would really do it, he pushed the knife all the way down inside his chest until it hung up on something solid, and he held the man's eyes the entire time he did it, he _swears_.

He didn't look away once.

But he's never come across fear like this before, so thick it chokes you, clamps its hands down over your thighs and glues you where you are, and now his nails dig themselves into the chair underneath him and something he thinks might actually be a _whimper _sticks inside his throat, and he presses himself back into the chair, makes himself as small as he can go-

"Cid."

She looks like Matron, but that's not her voice.

No; scratch that.

She only looks like Matron on first glance, during the brief flicker of a look he passes over her, a fleeting peek that does not show him the blue-ink veins beside her eyes or the hot yellow fever inside them, but the second look- that's when he gets it, that this is not his mother, that this is only something that _looks _like his mother, that this is something that is probably not even human-

Cid's legs work better than his, because he stands; he holds onto his desk for support and blinks owlishly behind his glasses and his throat sucks in, in, flexes and strains itself tight above the collar of his shirt, but he's _standing _at least, which is more than anyone can say about him-

Her smile is _sharp_, her eyes full of things he doesn't understand, and that paper snowfall keeps circling and swooping and spinning above her head, and he still can't fucking _move _what's _wrong _with him-

There's a letter opener on Cid's desk.

He noticed it when he first came in because the light caught it just right and sent this little piercing ray into his eye, and now he looks at it again, and when she stretches out her long pale hand for it, he realizes he's seen it before.

Back at the orphanage.

It smelled like lavender.

She hid it in this jar of potpourri because she knew the second he got his sticky little fingers on it it was going in someone's eye, but he found it anyway, and his aim wasn't quite good enough to take out an eye, but Chicken Wuss did wake up screaming one night, convinced those little penis gremlins were after him, _he swore_, because one of them had just touched their claw to his leg, and that was almost as good.

Cid opens his mouth, and the letter opener-

It makes this sound, when it slips inside flesh.

Sort of a squelching; maybe you've heard it before. Ever watch a hunter butcher an animal? The taking apart, the disassembling of fur and bone and meat, the stripping down, slipping in-

He heard this same sound when he looked into his third father's eyes and stabbed him through the chest, and it is like that scene is overlaid across the top of this one now, a transparency, and for a moment Matron is transposed, suctioned away, and he sees only Quistis on the floor, his foster father staggering backward, his shaking red hand (he never knew how much blood there was in the human body, _ok_? He never thought it would get everywhere like that), and something thuds hollowly against Cid's desk and he is snapped back, startled-

And she _shoves_.

Cid's eye pops, bursts apart in a spray of red, and listen to your breathing the next time you run, the next time you sprint all-out, balls to the wall, because this is the only way you will understand how hard his lungs are working right now, how difficult it is to just inhale: like swallowing knives, like gasping Drano, and _fucking Hyne what does he do what the hell is happening he doesn't understand what has she _done-

He is fastened to his chair.

She twists the letter opener, and something cracks, splits apart-

-his heart maybe it's his heart it _feels _like it's his heart _Hyne Hyne Hyne fucking Hyne_-

Cid goes down with the opener in his jugular.

The papers circling overhead drift down, settle, become silent snowfall on the floor between them-

She turns her hot yellow fever eyes on him and please don't let it end like this, please _please please Matron _what's wrong with _her_-

She folds her hands in front of her dress and the smile on her lips creases the corners of her eyes, rumples the blue-ink branches of those veins, and now the rippling is back, and he is still rooted, a fucking statue-

The rippling spreads out and out through the room, rocks him like a concussion-

It's here when he opens his eyes, because there's nothing more to see, but there are lots of things to make him _wonder_, and the most prevalent question of them all is why she let him live.

His second mother- who smelled like cookies and garden dirt, who pretended he didn't cry when all the eager young moms and dads came to pick out their new children and did not want him- whacked his second father so violently she left blood all over the floor, so much of it his shoes slid around in the shit like wax, and then she vanished, and she did not take him with her.

She left him behind to explain why a juvenile delinquent who just days ago had tried to kill one father had not been responsible for the murder of another.

He's still not sure whether anyone believes him, but that was eight years ago, and no one here has a memory that stretchy.

What saved him was a set of fingerprints that weren't his, and an on-site psychiatrist who swore to the cops that he found little bad-ass attempted murderer Seifer Almasy shaking in the corner, trying not to cry, and what that on-site psychiatrist got in return was a pincushion to poke all his theories into, a shivering little specimen whose brain he spent the next six months trying to pry open and crawl around inside.

He stares at the ceiling.

He's got the fucker memorized after eight years in this place, every crack, stain, and mark, and on nights when he can't sleep, he charts it like a map, connects all these little imperfections with his drifting eyes, until something emerges: a picture, a memory-

But fuck that memory, whatever it is; he never lets it materialize all the way, because past is past and it's only the future that means anything, that is going to carve him into something worthwhile, and only assholes keep looking back over one shoulder, hoping.

His door shoots open, hisses off to one side, and ten feet of lube-oiled spikes cram themselves into the room like an entire Chocobo herd gone wild, that jerky, that _fast_: Wuss does not so much walk as zip, ricocheting off furniture and fellow SeeDs and disgruntled instructors who bellow for him to F_ucking walk, Dincht how many times have I _told _you_, and he sits up with both hands still linked behind his head, because this should be interesting.

Chicken Wuss isn't wearing any pants.

He expresses his concern with laughter that swells and swells and swells until it fills the whole room.

"Shut _up_!" Zell snaps, hitting the panel beside the door to seal their room closed behind him.

"Where the fuck are your pants, Wuss?"

"_Shut up!_"

He scurries over to the closet with both hands tented in front of his crotch, like they don't have exactly the same fucking equipment, and now Seifer unhooks his hands and swings both legs over the side of the bed, and a tilt of his head and a sandpaper hack of a throat clear, and Zell glances back over one shoulder, scowling.

"I repeat: what the fuck happened to your pants?"

"I don't _wanna' talk about it_."

He waits, dangling his hands into the open v of space between his legs.

"I went to the infirmary because this T-Rex kinda' ripped me while I was going through the training center, today, right? So, like, it wasn't deep or anything, but sometimes you know how little cuts can blow up into these huge infections and then they have to amputate your arm because all the blood flow gets cut off even though all you had was, like, this little paper cut and then you're walking around with only one arm, although it's kinda' a cool story to tell people about how this one time you fought a T-Rex and it ate your arm-"

"Where the _fuck are your pants_, Wuss?"

"Dude, I'm _getting there_. Freaking, Hyne, man, you're so _impatient_."

He rolls his eyes and wonders how quickly he can make it across the room, and something must flicker in his eyes or sketch itself grimly across his lips, because Zell's lazily gesturing hand suddenly becomes frantically fumbling, yanking his pants up around his waist.

"Anyway, so I was heading down to the infirmary with this cut and _Jansen _suddenly steps out in front of me, and man I really freakin' _hate _that guy, he's such a _douche_. So, anyway, he started asking me if you passed the instructor exam, and I told him it was none of his business and that his face was ugly-"

"_Good one_," he sneers.

"Stop _interrupting _me-"

"Get to the fucking point-"

"I'm _trying_. Anyway, Jansen started talking all this shit about you, right? And I don't like you either, because you're an even bigger douche than him sometimes, but he was full of a bunch of crap so we started getting into it, and of course I kicked the shit out of him, and then one of his friends walked up behind me and tried to start crap too, so I was like OH YEAH LET'S GO FUCKER except then one of the instructors walks up so of course we're all in deep shit at that point for fighting in the halls, so I'm like, well, I can't be on probation again, cause Instructor Danner just wrote me up for running in the halls on Monday and then for riding my T-board on Wednesday, and one more infraction and I get knocked down a rank, so I just got the hell out of there, and while I was kinda' pushing my way through the students, trying to just sort of lose myself so Danner couldn't see me, this one kid reaches out because I knocked him off balance or something, I think, and he manages to get his hand tangled in my belt, and then he falls, and he yanks my pants down with him-" He pauses for a breath here, scratching the back of his neck, "-and so of course I'm like _oh shit_, and right then I look up, and Ellone is just standing there, watching me with her mouth hanging open." He sags down onto his bed with both hands to his head, and there is something about the way the guy's face twists, screws itself up in misery, that softens him just slightly, and this softening, this melting down of his walls is so unacceptable he thinks about the precise velocity at which his fist would need to travel to smear Wuss' nose across his face, and he is almost half-convinced of this course of action, of the _rightness _of it, that he is already halfway to his feet when he is suddenly stopped, knocked reeling-

"Hey, how's your hand? And your leg? How ya' feelin'?"

No one has asked him that.

No one except an infirmary assistant whose job it is to ask such questions, who inquires with clinical disconnection all the questions he wishes someone would ask with just a little goddamned emotion behind them: "Do you have feeling back in all your fingers," "Can you move your hand through a full range of motion," "Have you tried using your gun blade; how does it feel? Can you grip it properly?"

How does _he _feel.

How does he _feel_.

No one asks him that. What is he still capable of; is he of any use to Garden anymore; has he beaten his best time on the training center simulation yet; when will he be _healed_-

Not _how does he goddamned feel_, and there is something about this question that just…_drains _him, suctions away all his fight, and now he is left standing, staring, and someone take their goddamned _hand _out of his chest it _hurts._

There's a lot of innocence in Wuss' eyes.

He's thought about this before, how they are not soldier's eyes, not really: it is like the guy just sort of stumbled into this life, dipped himself down deep inside of it before he ever really understood what the fuck it's all about, and he is going to get himself killed one day, believing in truth and justice and the triumph of good over evil, every single time.

"Fine," he answers tightly. The hand inside his chest has moved itself into his throat.

"Can you still fight ok? Dr. Kadowaki said she hooked you up to a Cura IV when they brought you in and you should be ok. She said everything should heal up fine in a few days, but I was just wondering, you know, because-" He pauses and laces his hands together beneath his chin, props a thumb along either side of his jaw, and now they just fucking stare at each other, and he hates how far down inside of him this little fucker can see.

He pops his neck, shrugs both shoulders up to his ears and lets them sag back down again, and they need to cut this fucking shit out right now, before someone's panties shift and he gets an eye full of vagina. "Everything works fine, including my dick, which I know is what you're really worried about. Yes, it's huge; no, you can't touch it."

Zell flops noisily backward onto his bed. "You going to the ball tonight?"

"Tch. Why the hell would I do that?"

There is a smile in Wuss' voice. "Quisty's gonna' be there."

"Yeah- panting over _Puberty Boy_."

"Man, what do girls see in him, anyway?"

"Fuck if I know. There's just something about a brooding asshole that fucking creams their panties. 'Oh my God! I just confessed my love for him and he completely ignored me and walked off alone into a corner and he just _stood there ignoring me_ looking all constipated! Sooo hot!'" Seifer squeals.

Zell frowns.

"Maybe that's what I need to do if I want Ellone to pay attention to me. Especially after today." He flops around some more, spreads himself loudly across the sheets, sucks in the biggest fucking sigh Seifer has ever heard and exhales it back out again.

"Cheer up, Wuss." He kicks the bottom of one dangling foot. "It could be worse."

"How?"

"She could have dated you, fallen in love, kept herself pure until your wedding night, and then changed her mind when she realized how small your dick is; now she already knows. Divorces are messy; the guy always gets fucked, and not like the kind of fucking you're into, you know, with giant hairy man fists."

"You know why Quisty doesn't like you?" he snaps, sitting up with a scowl. "You're an infected _peehole_."

"You know why Ellone doesn't like you?" he fires back. "She could get lost inside your massive fucking vagina, it's that huge, and that scares her. If she wanted to munch carpet, Wuss, she'd pick a lot better looking girl than _you_."

"Asswipe."

"Faggot."

"Moron."

"Shitbreath."

"Uh…_worse _shitbreath."

He kicks the bottom of Zell's foot harder, and hooks one thumb over his shoulder toward the door. "Get your fucking shoes on. We're crashing this goddamned thing. If Quistis is thinking about dancing with that bag of smashed assholes, she might as well see how much better her other options are first."

* * *

_Lovers, forget your love,  
And list to the love of these,  
She a window flower,  
And he a winter breeze._

_When the frosty window veil  
Was melted down at noon,  
And the caged yellow bird  
Hung over her in tune,_

_He marked her through the pane,  
He could not help but mark,  
And only passed her by  
To come again at dark._

_He was a winter wind,  
Concerned with ice and snow,  
Dead weeds and unmated birds,  
And little of love could know._

He presses the pages of his gun magazine a little closer in around his book as a cadet streaks past with a sharp _clip-clap _of boots on pavement, and in the sky above him the sun shudders, flickers off, snaps back on again-

The clouds roll themselves apart in patches, slap themselves messily back together again, and his book is eclipsed, shadowed, painted back over with fading lemon light.

He squints down at his book and shifts his feet in their boots, one ankle over the other, and that Hyne-damn sun fades back away into the thunderstorm sky again.

The grass underneath him numbs his ass and the rifle beside his leg peels back all the sweltering wool-lined warmth of his pants to anesthetize his thigh and in the sky above him the sun dips, shivers, rolls itself inch by trembling inch toward the sea-

He snaps his magazine shut.

He lays back in the soft quicksand grass, sinks down an inch, two-

He likes this sensation, this being swallowed. An hour from now, the feedback shriek of the PA system will shoot him upright, expel him from this moment, but for right now, he can just coast; he can shut his eyes and drift away into the rain-scented grass and the storm-odor sky and think of windows veiled in frost and cold-winter men, and he can forget his gun-smoke nostrils, stinging tears from his eyes.

That's what they always smell like, you know. His hands, too. You think you can scrub the scent of killing out of them, burn it out of your whole olfactory system, but once it's there it's there, and you will never remember how the world used to smell without it.

He slips both hands beneath his head, laces his fingers together, and now the first rumble of that incoming storm hits, and he feels it strike all the way down into the ground underneath him.

He smiles.

He opens his mouth to catch raindrops on his tongue and listens to the alarmed yells of cadets scrambling for cover-

And suddenly his Hyne-damned teeth come down over his tongue and Hyne-_damn _that _hurts _the heck is his _problem_-

His eyes peel themselves open into the stinging needle-sharp rain and he squints toward the center of the quad, shifts his hat a little higher-

"Selphie Tilmitt, reporting for duty! Heeey, you guys, wait up! Where's this party I've been hearing about? I love parties! What about you guys? Oooh- does this Garden actually teach you how to dance and stuff? We had some small dances at Trabia, but I hear you guys have actual _balls _here, and knowing how to really dance would come in handy for political functions and stuff, right?"

There is lightning- there _must _be lightning but he doesn't see anything- it's _inside _of him, is what it is: he has been lit up all the way down to his toes, and this white-thermite burning spreads itself out through his arms and into his fingers and he _scrambles_, he skids in the Hyne-damned grass and he pitches forward onto his knees and ahead of him this little slip of a woman skips herself humming across the paved walkway opposite him-

Turn your head turn your head turn _your Hyne-damned _head-

He is hearing things; she called herself something else; her hair is not the same shade as a cheerful six-year-old orphan in a yellow-sun dress-

He scrapes his feet together underneath him and he _pushes_, shoves hard enough to make it up off his knees, and this is not- this is not _her_, not _now _after _so long_; he is not getting his hopes up, but oh _Hyne_, _please _let it be her- he never knew what happened to her and if she is here if she is _here right now _where he can _hold _her-

He forgets his magazine.

He just barely remembers his rifle.

He slides and he slips and he stumbles his way forward across the grass and he _prays_, Hyne-damn he prays so _hard_-

A high-pitched whistle crosses the quad, lifts itself above the drumbeat rain, and he reaches the walkway without even turning back, without once glancing over his shoulder, rifle in his tight white-knuckled hand and his heart in his throat-

"Cowboy! Where the fuck are you going?"

She's gone.

He listens to the rain come down around him.

He relaxes his fingers and adjusts his hat and he pivots on a heel to face them with his gun over one shoulder and a smirk on his face, and he says nothing about her sunshine smile or her peppermint-glue hand inside his own.

"Lookin' for me, ladies?"

* * *

A face jams itself into her peripheral view, bends itself sideways, is eclipsed by a cheerfully waving hand.

"Hi!" the face chirps.

Quistis starts just slightly, and this startled little jerk pulls her eyes from the crowd and flicks them down over this tiny staring face, still awkwardly tip-tilted.

"I'm Selphie; those guys over there told me you're Quistis Trepe." She jabs a pink-painted finger toward a cluster of uniformed cadets in the opposite corner and then sweeps it back around toward Quistis, tapping it up against the arch of her nosepiece to nudge her glasses just slightly off-center. "We're roommates! I just transferred from Trabia. Nice to meetcha!"

The cheerfully waving hand is thrust into her own, and she squeezes back by reflex alone, her lips soundlessly working for just an eyeflicker of a moment, the longest stretch of silence this bubbly little…thing will allow. "Ooh! That guy over there's looking at you! He's cute; is he your boyfriend?" She swings her free hand around in an arc that encompasses the back half of the ballroom and something hot and hard and tight wedges itself into Quistis' throat and pulls her head around on a trajectory to match that arc, and she is filled with so much _hope_, sifting all the way through this crowd for his aloof blue-glass eyes-

This tiny bubbly pink-painted girl is pointing at Seifer, and now she watches his whole face twist together into a smirk, and she narrows her eyes into something she hopes is appropriately off-putting, but he never _could _take a hint.

"Hey, who's the tall guy next to him in the hat? He's cute! The one with the weird cheek tattoo thingy isn't bad either! Man, the guys here are so much better than the ones at Trabia!" She tugs a little on Quistis' hand, bobbing them both up and down. "So is the blonde guy your boyfriend? Want me to go ask him to dance for you? I think he's coming over here- maybe _he'll _ask _you_ to dance, Quisty!" Her fingers slide away at last with a little suction-cup pop and she claps them enthusiastically together, just once, and then she is suddenly gone, pushing away through the crowd. That gold-gleaming head so far above the rest of the assembled throng swivels back around toward her and she ducks, tucks herself back away into the corner-

He almost cost her her _career_, and does he have to look so _smug _all the time?

Oh _Hyne_; her new roommate is marching right up to him, short little arms swinging staccato bursts of determination, and now she ducks again, tucks herself farther away-

Her eyes snag on a darker corner, a deeper recess, and at the very edge of it she catches a flicker of white-star chandelier light off brass-polished buttons, and for just a moment her breath is abruptly shut away inside of her, sealed closed.

She makes her way across the wax-shining floor toward him with both hands behind her back and this soft little smile on her face, and she thinks about them hiding away together, sharing secrets in dark corners, shyly dancing around questions they have wanted for so long to ask-

He looks up from his boots and blandly meets her gaze.

"Hiding?" she teases him gently, bringing both hands around in front of her to fold them together against her thighs. "I'm surprised to even see you here."

He lifts both arms to his chest and crosses them tightly.

"No congratulations for me?" she asks lightly. She will not give in to this cold sinking inside of her, this falling, because he has always been tight-lipped, he has _always _looked at her in exactly this way with exactly this same dispassion, this- _lacking_, but one day he is going to look at her with something more; one day he is going to peel away his mask and step into her arms-

"Do you need something?"

She pulls back just slightly, and her hands become fists in front of her thighs. "Need?"

Nothing about his face changes. He is a stone, something to be dashed against, hurled screaming up across all his smooth-granite angles.

She is going to break herself against him one day.

She doesn't _understand_. She has always been top of her class -top of this whole _institution_- she has never failed at anything, _ever_, except getting this one winter-eyed man to look at her, to really _see _her.

He is lonely- she knows this. She _gets _this: she has been locked away in isolation from her peers for so long that she can scent this out instantly in a fellow comrade. Her peers admire her, worship at her shining spit-polished boots, leave anonymously gushing tributes to their love for her at her door, but they do not _know _her, and they do not want to; she has been built up into an illusion, an idol, and to know her would be to topple her from that perch, her carefully-constructed altar.

They do not know him either, and if he would just open his eyes, he'd _see; _they are so much _alike._

The smile on her lips is only a little half-quirk of the mouth. "I don't need anything, Squall. I just wanted to talk to you."

He looks away from her out over the dance floor. "About what?"

This brightly casual tone hurts her throat, and she swallows it back down inside her chest. "I just saw you over here and thought you might like someone to talk to. You looked lonely."

"I'm back here on purpose," he says, and his eyes push all the way through her, and she hears the rest of his unspoken statement like it hangs in the air between them, weighted.

He crosses his arms tighter and slumps farther down the wall at his back, and he looks away from her again, and this next question on her lips is _stupid_, she knows it is, but it slides free anyway and then there is no taking it back. "Don't you want to dance?"

He doesn't look at her. "With you?"

"Well…yes. If you'd like to." She unwinds the fists against her thighs and coils them together, sweat-smeared palm to sweat-smeared palm, and she _squeezes_, presses down so hard she can feel all the frail little bones in her hands. She tries out her best smile on him. "I've seen you dance in class before; you're very good at it. It just seems like a waste, to sit over here in the corner not talking to anyone when-"

"No," he says abruptly, and pushes himself up off the wall to lose himself in the crowd without once looking back over his shoulder at her, and the smile on her lips goes stiff, a frozen corpse grin, and now she forces that union of sweat-smeared palm to sweat-smeared palm back into her thighs, blinking.

He can press her down into something _so small_, without even trying.

She curls away inside of herself and she lifts one hand nonchalantly to her hair like this doesn't hurt at all, like he has not just broken her open and spilled her messily across the immaculately gleaming floor beneath her boots-

She walks out onto the balcony beyond his little hiding place, into the cool thunderhead air where there is no light.

* * *

He watches Pubes stride away from Quistis without glancing back, and now her shoulders hunch up toward her ears and he crosses both arms over his chest and his eyes track that fucker through the crowd, triangulating his position, assessing how many flailing idiots he has to make it through to reach the asshole's throat-

Irvine shifts beside his elbow, bumping up against the sleeve of his SeeD uniform, and he lets Puberty Boy walk away to live another day.

"Go fucking talk to her," Seifer snaps, one hand looping up toward the back of his neck to burrow into the itch at the base of his collar.

"And tell her _what_, man? I've been waiting sixteen years to see her again when she doesn't even _remember _me?"

"You're supposed to have dicked more women than a fucking porn star at the height of his career, and you're telling me you don't know how to even talk to a fucking woman? What do you do, just pull them into a dark alleyway by the hair, slip it in before they realize what's going on, get in your two pumps and then walk away again?"

"No, man, but this is _Selphie_."

"She puts on her thong one leg at a time, just like Wuss." He watches Quistis disappear through the stone-cut opening leading out onto the private little balcony beyond, and something squeezes inside his chest. "Go talk to her. I've gotta' go. Keep an eye on Wuss, would you? If he comes back bitching about how much his stomach hurts from eating 370 hot dogs and vomits all over my bed again, I swear to fuck I will throw him out our window."

"Quistis?" Irvine asks quietly, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves, nodding his head toward that opening.

"Your girlfriend told me to ask her to dance, didn't she? If she's even half as annoying as she used to be as a kid, she'll be back over here in ten minutes, doing that thing where she tries to fucking talk to me again."

"Good luck, man."

"Fix your hat, dumbshit; it looks like you just climbed out of a sack roll with Wuss."

"Shucks, Almasy; you know how to make a guy blush."

"Go bone some heterosexuality back into your dick."

"Not _too much_, though, right, sweetheart?" Irvine winks.

Seifer waves good-bye with only one finger.

* * *

He finds her leaning against the night-chilled railing, looking down into the sea far below.

"Want me to beat him up for you?"

She startles only slightly, tightening her fingers on the railing, and now he walks up to join her far above that flat mirror-glass ocean, slanting himself casually down onto one elbow, eyebrow cocked.

She sighs. "Why are you here?"

"He's gay, you know."

She stiffens her shoulders and keeps looking out over that railing away from him, hooking her fingers farther in around this cold-steel barrier. "He isn't gay, Seifer."

"He would have to be, to keep turning you down."

"He didn't turn me down- he just isn't comfortable dancing in front of all these people."

"So you're telling me that out here, where it's private, he'd want to dance with you?"

Her shoulders slump a little, pull themselves forward, and he feels like a gigantic fucking ass.

"Seifer, please just go away."

He pretends this does not kick him low and leave him reeling, and is that goddamned _robot _really so much _better _than him- doesn't she even fucking remember _just a little _what they have been through together-

He shifts himself a little closer along the railing toward her, and in the sky above them the moon throws its pale cloud-filtered light down over her face, and he sees something shining in her eyes and drying on her lips, and he is suddenly all hot liquid bones and feather-ash heart; why doesn't she turn just a little of that misguided fucking devotion toward _him_-

He wouldn't make her cry.

His voice is stuck somewhere down deep inside him, bricked away inside his cotton-wad lungs.

She pushes her glasses aside to rub tiredly at her eyes.

"Dance with me; I'm way better at it than he is anyway." He tilts himself sideways to prop one hip on that cold-winter railing and dangles a hand loosely into the space between them, wiggling his fingers.

"I don't need any _pity_, Seifer, thank you," she replies coldly.

"It's not _pity_, Trepe. Every straight guy here wants to dance with you."

She rolls her eyes up toward that pale cloud-filtered moon, but at the very corner of her lips this little suggestion of a smile ticks, spasms, and he slips himself forward another inch. "I guess it's probably too fast of a song for you; I remember you had two left fucking feet in class. Every time I had you as a partner, I left bleeding. You almost broke my dick off one time, trying to figure out one of the steps. I don't even know what the hell your foot was doing up that high. But then again, neither did you; you didn't really know what the hell you were doing on anything."

"I graduated _top_-"

"Tell that to my dick."

"If you incurred any injuries during practice, it was purposeful, because you deserved them."

He straightens slowly, scratching at the cuff of his right sleeve, rolled up to his elbow. She follows the movement with her eyes and frowns just slightly, digging a shallow little crease into the smooth skin between her eyebrows. "You'll get in trouble if one of the instructors notices- that's a violation of the dress code."

"You're an instructor now. Are you going to write me up?"

"I'm on a probationary period for a month; I'll be evaluated, and then granted full instructor status. I don't have any authority at the moment."

"So then you won't get in trouble for dancing with a lowly subordinate."

"You wouldn't care if I would; you asked me before I said a word about my probationary period."

"_Instructor_, you wound me; I only want what's best for you. That would be me, by the way."

This pulls an incredulous laugh out of her, and even if it's at his expanse, it gives him the warm and fucking fuzzies, just for a moment, just to hear it, and he smiles down at her in the moonlight and maybe she is just tired, maybe she is just too worn-out and ground-down to resist, but she _smiles _right fucking back at him, a real honest-to-fucking-Hyne _smile_, and he sweeps her an exaggerated bow and offers his hand, and he can see her actually thinking about it this time, turning it over in her mind-

He uses his offered hand to pin her wrist between his fingers, tugs this wrist up high enough to slap her white-moon hand down across his shoulder, and now the fingers of their free hands meet, lace, cinch themselves down tight palm to palm, and he steps smoothly out.

"Other way, Trepe," he says, spinning her underneath his outstretched arm, and when she careens back into his arms she has to frantically fumble the fingers of her left hand into the front of his uniform to steady herself, and he laughs right in her face. "You're really shitty at this. Squall wouldn't know what the hell to do with all of this, anyway- he's just as bad as you are."

"_Seifer_-"

"You're like a fucking robot. You're stiffer than Chicken Wuss when he watches gay porn." He pulls her in a little closer, slides her hand a little lower on his shoulder, and now her lips compress themselves into a thin little sour-lemon line, and he pushes his hips forward into hers, into that goddamned tissue paper skirt, and behind her glasses her eyes pop owl-wide-

"What are you _doing_-"

"Fucking _relax_. That's how this dance goes; you're supposed to be smashed up against each other." He slants his face down toward hers, brings it a scant half inch from her nose, and now they are one single exhalation, passed back and forth between them, his rough keloid forehead to her velvet-down own, and Hyne bless the pervert who thought up these fucking skirts. "Roll your hips."

"Excuse me?"

"Like this." He presses his hips forward just a little farther, just a little deeper, circles them, strings the movements together into one liquid undulation. "Do it; what I just did."

"I don't-"

"Just tuck your pelvis up and forward, then do a hip circle- no, now you're just awkwardly rubbing yourself against my dick."

Her face flares bright red and she lets go of his hand, snatches the other one back from his shoulder-

He slides one hand around the curve of her hip and locks her in place, digs his fingers into her lean training-whittled waist and now he tips her back, slides his free arm around her spine-

"Let go-"

"Right now?" he asks into her ear, holding her a foot above the ground, letting her just hover there, suspended, and her lips are _this _fucking close and that goddamned tissue paper skirt has worked itself just slightly up her thighs, and now he can feel every little fucking curve of her pressed into him, short-circuiting his goddamned brain-

"No, wait-" She scrabbles for the collar of his uniform, pins it against his throat with her panicked fingers, hooks one arm instinctively around his neck. "Let me back up, first."

He smiles. "Say please, Instructor."

"_Seifer_."

He tilts her back upright and correctly arranges her hands once more. "Just _try _it, Trepe. If you give up now, then you just prove me right: you're a shitty dancer."

Her look freezes him all the way down to his balls, but she has not moved from his arms and he feels her tentatively try to mimic his motion, still a little unsure, that stick still wedged a little too firmly in her ass-

"No." He shifts both of his hands to her hips now, guides them up and out to one side, all the way around until she is right back where she started. "Like that. Put it all together; don't do a bunch of little separate movements- it's gotta' all be one," he says, and give the woman credit, she learns fucking _fast_, and that second revolution rubs his dick just fucking _right_, and now this involuntary little hiss steals its way up his throat and between his teeth and he leans himself forward just far enough to press his forehead down against her own and she flinches back, pulls just slightly away-

"Did I hurt you?"

"No," he says roughly.

"Are you sure?"

He needs to find a dark corner alone with his hand.

"Did I…do it right?"

"Yeah." She has not moved back nearly far enough and his voice strangles itself away inside his pinhole throat and now he steps forward, forces her corresponding foot backward, and they both spin, meet back up in the circle of his arms-

She is bright fucking red, and it's not like this should come as any surprise: his dick could break fucking boards right now.

"Seifer-"

She drops her hands, twists them awkwardly in front of her skirt and looks away, and he reaches up to roughly scrub his forehead scar with his callus-scabbed fingers, breathing in deep through his nose, just holding the inhalation inside of him until his straining dick relaxes just slightly and the fog inside his brain smokes itself ponderously away into nothing.

He crosses both arms over his chest and leans the point of his hip into the stone-cut entryway behind him. "That's what Puberty Boy's dick should have done when he saw you tonight."

Her mouth guppies open, snaps itself loudly shut once more.

"Congratulations, by the way, Instructor. He should have told you that, too."

She squeezes her hands together in front of her. "Maybe he did-"

"He didn't say a fucking word; he never does." He looks at her, really fucking stares, drives his eyes right through her like the point of something sharp, and he just fucking wishes…he just fucking wishes she would _see_.

That robotic fucking asshole is not even close to deserving her.

* * *

She likes him a little, sometimes, when he looks like this, when all his rough edges have been sandpapered away at the corners.

He has this smile, when he is not too busy putting on a show for everyone who is supposed to be afraid of him. A little crooked, a little higher on the left, half a centimeter deeper, and it softens his face, carves little brackets of crow's feet around his eyes, and something about it pulls at her just a little.

She almost…

It is that tightly-locked something inside of her again, securely sealed, little pieces of it breaking away, flying around inside her until they pierce something vital, and suddenly she thinks that she is forgetting something, that she has forgotten something important for a very long time-

She almost _understands_.

But the pieces always wing beyond where she can reach and the next time she lays down to sleep they will slip beyond dream smog and smoke, and she will rise the next morning with only a little tickle at the back of her mind, and she will not remember what she almost remembered just in time to forget.

She will remember the smile, though.

"I'm sorry you didn't pass," she says quietly.

His shrug is so calculatedly casual she knows it is not real, but he has always been good at shouldering failure, letting it roll off, slide away, and in six months when his chance rolls around again, he will simply make another run at it- he will keep pushing forward and forward and forward, until there is no more ground for him to gain.

She digs her fingers into the folds of her skirt. "I should have gone back for you the first time. I'm sorry."

Something flickers in his eyes.

He smiles, not the one she likes, but the other one, the one he puts on like a mask and pulls down tight until there are no gaps left between simulacrum and skin. "I know how you can make it up to me."

She rolls her eyes.

He pushes himself off the stone-cut opening and turns himself back toward the ballroom, and there is a slight hesitation in this turning, a faltering, and now he tips a look back over one shoulder that is as calculatedly casual as that shrug from before, and she folds her hands in front of her and waits, one eyebrow raised. "Yes?"

"Are you going to stay out here?"

"I think so. It's nice out tonight. Pretty soon it will be too cold to stand out here like this."

She likes the fall air. It smells of burning things in the wind and pumpkin lanterns on windowsills and when she pulls it all down deep, breathes it in through her nose and pushes it back out her mouth, it scratches around in her lungs, spills its brittle leaf-dust claws into her throat, and she is struck by just how very _alive _she is.

She has made it through another year. In months to come, breathing will be all soft white ghosts of inhalations that carve her up like knives, but those knives in her throat and the fire in her nostrils will only be more proof, more confirmation: she is _alive_, she is still hanging on, she still has _time_.

He is incomprehensible, sometimes.

He looks at her now like-

She doesn't know.

It isn't pity.

She is grateful for that.

He looks at her with something in his eyes that she almost remembers and he clears his throat like something sticky is blocking his airway, and for just a moment she wants to ask him to stay, she wants to tell him that sometimes he is not such bad company, even if he is not the company she wants, and she thinks about leaving him behind to die underneath the bomb-softened bones of that lift and she is pressed flat inside, tamped down around the edges-

He has always been here. She has not always wanted him -she has mostly _never _wanted him- but they joined Garden together at the age of fourteen and for eight years she has sat beside him in class and fought beside him in the training center, and just because he is not Squall does not mean she wants him to die.

She is tired of dying.

She is twenty-two and she has already buried a dozen different comrades, and she is tired of marking their names down in the little black book she keeps stashed beneath her desk.

Garden shuts them away in a file and does not open them again, but she takes out that book sometimes on nights when she has nothing else to do, when the tickling in her mind will not let her sleep, and she smoothes her fingers over the pages and she traces the indentations her pen has carved down into the rule-lined paper and she does not forget.

It's silly, of course. Some of them she doesn't even know that well. Some of them are little more to her than a neatly-noted name on a page, but these neatly-noted names that crowd themselves into the margins of her notebook are brothers and sisters and sons and daughters, and she would not want to be forgotten.

She is no one's sister and she is no one's daughter, but she would not want to be forgotten.

"Want to see something?" he asks.

She lifts her eyebrow higher. "I can only imagine where you're going with this."

His lips crack themselves open around a grin, and this, too, is just a little crooked and the crow's feet burrow themselves deeper, and she understands a little (perhaps) why so many new cadets waste their time on him.

"The fireworks are starting in a few minutes; you wanna' see them better?"

"I'm sure the view will be just fine from here."

"Nope; the ballroom blocks them. I know a place that's a lot closer."

"How _much _closer? It could be dangerous to-"

"Don't worry, Instructor, I'll protect you." He takes a step toward her. "Grab the lip of the roof."

"Excuse me?"

He slips both arms just beneath the curve of her ass and lifts, pops her up in his arms so suddenly she fumbles for a grip, a handhold-

"That's my fucking _hair_, Trepe-"

"What are you _doing_-"

"You want to see the fireworks, right? You always crap yourself every year when they go off. You want a front seat to the show, you go up. Don't worry; I've done this before."

"I don't think-"

He pushes.

"_Seifer_!"

She swipes instinctively for the domed lip of the ballroom and comes up with it in her hands, and now her choice is either to fall or keep pulling, keeping tugging herself up and over and onward, because he lets go and steps away, and he is _laughing _at her- why did she _ever _think she might want not want to add him to her notebook-

He is tall enough that he can just reach up and curl his hands around that lip, and now he pulls himself effortlessly up, rolls himself onto the roof beside her, and she wonders how many times he has done this before.

"There's a flatter area over there, to your left. Don't fall off, Instructor. Your skirt might flip up."

She narrows her eyes as tightly as they will go.

He smiles pleasantly. "It's all right if it does. I already looked while I was boosting you up here, so it's not like it won't be something I haven't seen before. Nice panties."

She starts on ahead of him, her boots slipping on the glass, and she hears his laughter start up in his chest again, and she thinks about how much of a mess he will make if she pushes him now, and whether it might just be worth it, even if she is stuck on clean-up duty.

"Hurry up."

"I just made instructor, Seifer- we're going to be in trouble if someone catches us up here."

"Nobody looks up, Instructor. If they did, they'd know I was lying earlier and you're not wearing any panties."

She feels her face go nuclear. "I don't know _what _your depraved mind deluded itself into seeing, but I am most certainly-"

He grabs her by the hands.

He sits down hard on the dome glass ceiling, pulling her down, and now one quick press of his boots slides him back, yanks her after, and his back hits the edge of a rust-flaking access ladder and his hands turn her at the shoulders and the sky above her rattles itself apart into green dust-

She goes still.

She watches the fireworks like this every year, motionless, absolutely alert, absorbed, because they are something she _does _remember, something that does not tunnel its way back down inside of her where she cannot find it anymore.

When she was a child she watched fireworks in a night sky and she was not alone, and she remembers that the air smelled like ocean and her breath tasted like candy on her tongue and someone tried to shyly hold her hand when the other children weren't looking-

There were other children.

There were other children and a mother and a father but she knows nothing else, and none of them have ever stepped forward to claim her, so why does she even _care_-

But she was happy.

She was _happy_.

That is what the fireworks fill her with: a memory of childlike wonder, an echo of some old joy, and for as long as the sky keeps rattling and shaking and ripping itself into pieces above her, she pokes experimentally away at this old joy, worries it like a scar not yet healed-

And always it breaks open, ruptures, and she feels her eyes heat and her lips twitch and she wishes there was more, she wishes she could dig just a little deeper, go a little lower-

Seifer has not taken his hands from her shoulders.

She lets him keep them there.

The night is getting cold after all, and his fingers are very warm.

* * *

There is a train inside his dream.

He shuts his eyes.

Fucking _boring_- show him some goddamned _action_.

He opens his eyes again and the train is still there and outside his smoke-etched window the sky rolls down into the hills or the hills tumble up into the sky and the scenery whips, rattles, melts past him-

There is no sound inside the train inside his dream.

There are no tunnels or stops or musical wind chime announcements and the smoke on the window is the cumulous puddling of his breath and he pulls his face back from where it rests cheek-down against the window, blinking-

The wheels on the tracks underneath him click click clack.

He draws pictures in the smoke, pushes an inhalation out through his lips to fog the window back over once more, and what a shitty, _shitty _fucking dream.

The hills roll and the sky scrolls and the wheels on the track go click click clack, click click clack-

She dreams next to him, head on his shoulder, and he pulls his finger back from the glass and looks down at the top of her head, and he hopes she is seeing something a lot more fucking interesting, because all this shit outside his window gets real old, real fast, but at least she is here beside him, at least she is tucked peacefully away into the crook of his arm, where she is safe-

He shuts his eyes and tilts his cheek down on top of her soft-silk hair and he lets himself breathe this moment in, pull it down deep into his lungs, hold it there, press it close-

Her head is like an anchor on his shoulder, a fully-loaded goddamned barbell.

Something begins to eat its way out of his chest.

Trepe-

_Quistis_-

Fuck if he knows why but in here he has no words, just an echo of her name inside his skull, rolling and rumbling and bouncing itself off the four walls of his brain-

Hey hey hey hey _hey _what the goddamned _hell _is _this _her in his arms but no breath on her lips or steady beat in her chest- what the _fuck_-

Quistis-

Quistis _please_-

She fell _asleep_- the train rocked her into it and she smiled at him and closed her eyes but she was supposed to _open them again-_

Quistis.

_Quistis_.

He squeezes his eyes shut and he just fucking _holds _her, presses her into his side so hard he can feel all the little knobs of her ribs and the jutting wing of her shoulder and take him _out _bring him _back _wake up _wake up _you _fucker_-

* * *

He jerks awake.

The sky has stopped exploding above him.

Her head dangles down on his shoulder and without the fireworks the sky is full of nothing and he can hear only this roaring white noise silence in his ears.

Have you ever noticed how goddamned _loud _silence can be when that's all there is, when there is nothing but you and this quiet and the most pervasive fucking fear you have ever felt-

He can't think he can't _breathe _he can't fucking _move_-

He feels this tiny little exhalation, the barest little bird flutter of a thing, stir his shirt in ripples across his arm and he shuts his eyes and he breathes in so hard and fast and deep all the black space behind his eyelids spins itself away past his eyes, jolts his world, but ask him how much he fucking _cares _because that barest little bird flutter of an exhalation was _hers_ and her head is heavy but not deadweight, and for just a moment all he can do is fucking choke on this.

He opens his eyes.

She sleeps with her mouth just slightly open, lashes fluttering, huddled instinctively into him away from the cold.

He smoothes a strand of hair away from her lips, tucks it carefully behind her ear, and tilts his head back against the access ladder behind him.

He knows why she watches the fireworks the way she does, like she is working so goddamned _hard _to process them, like there is something just at the edge of her mind that knows what to make of them but is not sure how to filter the information through to her in a way that makes sense.

He remembers what the fireworks mean and he remembers why they make her smile and he will keep remembering for as long as he fucking lives, and they can never take that away from him.

That's what she used to understand, before she forgot the fireworks: maybe they can take your memories and they can take your childhood, but they can't steal _choice_; there is always a fucking choice and they can't take that away from her and he will still be here waiting when she understands this once again.

She does not have to do what they say when they say just _because _they say.

She is too goddamned smart for that.

Her adoptive father put a boot to her throat and leaned himself into this stance until he pressed her down into something without shape, and then he filled her back up with all his lies, but that's all they ever goddamned were, and she has always -fucking _always_- been good enough for Seifer, no matter what that bastard told her.

She can choose to believe this and she can choose to fucking _fight _for what has been taken from her-

She can choose to have the fireworks back.

She can choose to tell them to go fuck themselves.

She thinks this is all she will ever have, all she can ever be, but he remembers a girl who built sandcastles in the rain and wrote stories in notebooks, who hid peppermint candy beneath her mattress, who looked up from a swing and gave him a smile that lit up his whole world, and that girl was not a _robot_, that girl did not fall blindly into step-

She _chose_.

She chose _him_.

She would have run back into that fucking communication tower without a second thought, and goddamned shot anyone in her way.

He looks down through layers of midnight to watch her face as she sleeps, and if she knew how fucking _bad _he wanted that girl back- if she knew how fucking far back he would go if he could, before she lost anything, before she lost _everything_-

You can't change the past.

You can only look ahead to the future.

You can only keep making your way step by step by step forward, and even if they are the tiniest of baby steps- her climb up onto this roof, her head on his shoulder -you keep your eyes on the fucking horizon and you do not stop.

Just keep _taking _those steps.

Just stay with him.

That's all he asks.

**A/N: So I guess I'm officially an Ellone/Zell shipper. Which is pretty much an unheard of pairing (although I'm sure someone else has tried it at least once), so I guess I'm mostly screwed in terms of finding fics to satisfy this particular craving. As always, thanks for reading!**


	5. Interlude Two

**A/N: Merry/happy whatever-it-is-you-guys-are-celebrating-this-holiday-season. Hope you have managed to bully your way through the crowds and get all your shopping done. To be honest, maybe I'm just a Grinch, but I really hate this time of year- even grocery shopping is a pain in the ass. There are just so many goddamned _people_. I enjoy spending Christmas with my family, but the lead-up puts me in a perpetually bad mood from right after Thanksgiving to New Years. Maybe it's because I don't drink. I bet being drunk would make all of it a lot more fun. **

**Mischka, I was actually just wondering the other day how Christmas goes in the FF VIII universe. Realistically, the orphanage gang probably doesn't even celebrate it- I doubt Garden (at least Galbadia Garden) makes much of holidays in between all the teaching kids how to kill people. Seifer probably thinks all the holiday cheer is annoying and that every mall Santa picture would be vastly improved if his fist were to put in an appearance; Squall probably spends the whole season in a dark corner writing badly rhyming emo poetry about commercialism; Quistis probably secretly likes it and decorates her whole dorm room and buys little Secret Santa gifts for all the people she is close to, and then flushes Seifer's down the toilet when he makes fun of her for doing so; Selphie 'borrows' Zell's T-board and figures out a way to rig an entire karaoke system to it and drives it around Garden singing 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' until Seifer catches up to her and leaves her hog tied in the basement with the karaoke system set to The Lazytown Cake song on repeat. (Look it up, but don't say I didn't warn you.) Irvine and Zell petition for the female uniform to be changed to a sexy Mrs. Claus dress, in honor of the holiday.**

**Yes, the whole Cid death scene...originally, there was just going to be a brief, passing mention of him suffering a heart attack, but when I brought this up in a discussion thread over on the_trepies livejournal group, Arisa K. insisted that just wasn't good enough. (Not a huge Cid fan, she.)**

**Orkryst, good to see you! I'm glad to know there are more of you out there, lurking in the shadows.**

**Tequila- he's never exactly _untroubled_, is he, pre-sorceress possession or not. What really went down with his foster dad will be revealed in good time, as will about a million other things, because this thing is going to be HUGE. The original Works document is at 52,000 words already, and I haven't gotten into much of the plot at all. There's just so much I want to explore that wasn't really touched on in the original game.**

**Anyway, this is just a short pre-holiday update I wanted to put up, since I don't have time for anything else. The holidays are a little bit nuts. I've still gotten a decent amount of work done on this, but holiday prep has definitely cut into my writing time a bit. Everything'll settle down pretty soon, though, and once it does, you guys will get chapter three. I hope you enjoy. **

**Interlude: _ **

One two three four-

He opens his fingers, peers between the gaps-

He's not s'posed to look (it's cheating, you know) but the beach is empty.

The beach has been empty for three weeks and three days according to the calendar above the kitchen sink, the one with all the stupid pictures of kittens and flowers that are too colorful. _Matron's _flowers don't look like that, and Matron is the best gardener ever _ever_, so the flowers in the calendar are _lies_.

"Ready or not, here I come!" he screams down the beach, just to hear the way his voice thunders, louder than the waves, louder than the gulls, louder than the scritch scritch scratch of Matron's trowel in the dirt.

She smiles at him from a patch of lacy blue flowers, soil under her nails and in smudges on her cheeks, and he kicks the sand, the stupid _stupid _sand, because there is no _stupid _bossy Quisty to tell him not to or Crybaby Wuss to go whining to Cid when it gets in his eyes.

He's really, really glad they are gone. He gets all the cookies now, you know? Matron pays attention only to _him _and he gets all the cookies and he is not _lonely_-

He crosses his arms over his chest and scowls and looks up where there is no empty beach.

The sky is all inky-looking today, pools of black in the clouds that are almost but not quite purple, the way the floor looked after he broke that one fancy pen of Cid's. It wasn't his fault anyway, it was that stupid bossy _Quisty's _because she stopped writing even though it's not like she has anything _better _to do with her time, and he threw the pen against the wall because he was just so _mad_, ok? She can't _ignore _him -no one _ignores _him- he's going to be famous one day doesn't she _know _that?

Matron's shovel stops scritch scritch scratching in the garden.

He lets the loudest yell he has ever screamed balloon up from his lungs and out between his lips and he runs straight at two little white gulls pecking away at the sand, waving his arms-

"Seifer!"

He stops.

His feet scramble in the sand for purchase and little stinging grains blow themselves back into his eyes and he blinks, scowls, sweeps one arm up to wipe them away-

"_Seifer_."

Sometimes there are dark things in Matron's eyes, and when they show up her voice gets like this, all tight and strained and mean-sounding, but he's not _afraid_; the other kids would have been but he's not because he's going to be a knight one day, and knights don't get scared so he doesn't either-

Her cold white soil-stained fingers close around his arm and she gives him a little shake, bends down to meet him eye-to-eye-

"Don't chase the birds."

Her voice squeezes him into something very small. His legs go all shaky, but it's still ok, he's still brave, because if anyone else were in this situation they would scream and cry and beg her to let them go because they know what's going to happen next-

"I won't," he whispers, shaking his head very hard and very fast.

"Are you _lying _to me?" she snaps.

"No- I won't chase the birds anymore. I _swear_."

"You're being too loud."

He won't be loud anymore- he'll be really really quiet like a _mouse _he'll be so quiet he _promises _just _please _Matron let go of his arm please please _please _make the dark things go away-

"Do you need to be punished?"

"No," he says as quietly as he can, hanging limply in her grip. She'll make him go away to the place inside his head, the one with all the shiny white stones and the monsters who stare at him with their poked-out eyes and he doesn't _want _to; he admits it _ok _he's _scared_-

She smiles, but it's not a Matron smile, it's something different, something that isn't very nice, and he wonders how hard he will have to pull to slip himself free of her fingers, how fast he will have to run to beat her to the trees where he can lose himself in the forest-

"I don't do it to be mean, you understand that, don't you, Seifer? It's for your own good. Little boys need to grow up to be brave, right? You want to be a knight when you grow up, right? Knights aren't scared of anything; they have to be strong so they can protect their mothers."

He _knows_, but the monsters in that place inside his head want to eat him, and he doesn't even have a sword when he's there-

The screen door slams like a gunshot and suddenly the dark things inside Matron's eyes go away and she drops his arm and stands staring down at her hand like it's going to bite her and on the porch Cid folds both arms across his chest, frowning-

"Edea?"

She wrinkles up her forehead and stares down at the dirt-smeared trowel in her hand and shakes it a little, flicking little black pieces of earthworm from its tip. "Seifer?"

He backpedals away from her, not enough to make her mad, just enough to put some distance between them, because if he's very, very fast he can turn around and run as hard as his legs will carry him back into those trees where she can't find him, and he can stay in there until the sun goes down and it starts to get cold and by then the dark things will be gone and she will smile at him the way she is supposed to, and he'll get one of the brownies from the cupboard for being a good boy and not bothering her while she does some things with this minty-smelling oil that's s'posed to get rid of her headache.

She gets headaches a lot now.

"Edea, are you all right?"

She turns back toward the porch. "I'm…I'm fine. Just a little dizzy from working out in the sun all day."

"You keep forgetting to wear a hat. Come inside for a while and get something to drink." He holds the door open; the house is black like a mouth behind him. "Seifer? Are you coming?"

His legs are still all shaky and they knock knock knock at the knees so he sits down in the sand and picks up the stick he left there earlier this morning. "Nope. I'm gonna' stay out here and play."

"All right. Stay out of the water. Edea?"

Matron goes into the house and the door slams shut and the ocean sucks away on the shore, all slurpy, like crybaby Zell eating one of the popsicles he used to steal from the freezer when the grown-ups weren't looking.

He buries the tip of his stick in the beach, scratches away and away and away at it.

He writes his letters in the sand now.

She doesn't want them anymore.

She is just a dumb _girl _anyway.


	6. Chapter Three

**A/N: Hope everyone had a good holiday break. I'm kinda' pissed at the way the holidays fell this year: with New Year Day being on a Tuesday, I have to go to work tomorrow, then I get Tuesday off, then back to the grind on Wednesday. I know some people don't even get the holiday off, so I'm grateful at least for the small vacation, but I'd rather have just a straight three day weekend.**

**Big thanks to the anonymous reviewer who popped up in my inbox yesterday; always nice to see a new face. (I assume you are new, at least. Maybe you've commented before and just didn't leave a name this time. Either way, thank you for your comment; it made me smile. I'm glad you are enjoying my take on the FF VIII universe.)**

**I do have a quick question I would like to pose to you guys. As I said before, this is going to be long; there are many things I want to expand upon, and I'd like to really give our orphanage gang some time in the spotlight, take this beyond the sort of all-consuming love story that the game focused on, to the detriment of the other characters, IMHO. While this is a love story, it's also a lot more than that, and it's going to need a lot of time and space. I intend to split this story into four parts, as the game is divided into four discs. I've been thinking about this a bit, and I am considering breaking up the fic a little, so that it is not just one huge 600,000 word block of verbal (written, whatever) vomit. My plan is to divide it into two volumes and post them as separate fics, with the first volume being comprised of parts one and two, and the second parts three and four. If the fic ends up being shorter than I think, I will post it altogether, but I don't foresee that happening. If you've got an opinion either way, feel free to chime in. **

**Also, have you guys noticed all the novelizations popping up lately? I saw one back when I went to post the prologue for this, and I just noticed another yesterday while browsing through the most recently updated works for something good. I feel kind of unoriginal, although it looks like the other two are pretty much just straight novelizations.**

**Anyway. Enough yammering.**

**Chapter Three**

Galbadia Garden

Galbadia

_I used to dream a lot about trains, back then. Graveyards, too; just weird shit. You could say there was some metaphysical/subconscious/whatever bullshit reason for it, but really what it came down to was that she fucked me up good, before Garden ever even got a hold of me. She was already planting the seeds, got it?_

_ That wasn't a pun, by the way. Only Chicken Wuss is that lame. _

_ You can see what a hopeful little asshole I was back then, how much I still had to learn about destiny. _

She doesn't remember her formative years, but she remembers what followed: her admittance to Garden, her SeeD exam, the first time she understood that death comes down from the sky like rain, a thousand stinging little droplets of it.

She wonders when these fresh-faced cadets struggling awkwardly with their wooden practice weapons and their first level spells will discover it.

They sweat over blue rubber mats she has sweated and bled and cried over for eight years now, and she feels this little lightning zip of a thrill go all the way through her, to be the one looking over and not looked over; she is here to judge and not be judged, and there is so much _freedom _in this she can almost taste it.

She moves among them, correcting a stance here, altering a swing there, pausing to discuss the merits of elemental junctioning with a group of eager young faces that turn attentively toward her, like they actually _care _what she has to say, like they are clinging to every word, and her smile just barely fits itself on her face and yawns open inside her, and when Instructor Marks nods approvingly before turning back to his own group, she tucks the brusque little motion away inside herself, to be taken out later and studied, exclaimed over: she is really _here; _she is really _teaching_; she is actually being taken _seriously_-

Someone is _listening_.

It is almost enough to make up for waking up on Seifer Almasy's shoulder this morning.

She left behind a streak of drool on his shirt, and she is relatively positive he is never going to let her forget it.

He should have never let her fall asleep; she should have never followed him up there in the first place -if she is found out it will mean this probation period is over before it has even started, and all because of _him_, this man who almost lost her her chance in the first pace-

She curls a young man's hand into a tighter fist -thumb across the front of the knuckles, always, not tucked up over the top- and moves on to the next, tipping an elbow inward, tucking it close along the ribs, and now she pauses to nudge her glasses half a centimeter back up her nose, perfectly pressed against the bridge. She's not being entirely fair, she knows -he didn't _force _her to hesitate in the face of a direct order; he did not make her pull that shot or shove her back down the hill toward him, but if he would just toe the _line_ once in a while, she would not have to follow so closely behind him, mopping up his messes along the way.

"Use your hips; don't punch with just your arm. You can't get nearly enough force behind it that way. You want your entire body behind the hit."

The student adjusts, tries again, looks up with hopefully slanted eyebrows, and she smiles and gently touches his shoulder and moves on down the line, offering suggestions, demonstrating basics: how to punch through a target and not to; how to keep the feet positioned just so; how to rise up on the balls of the feet and not plant the heels solidly into the mat underneath them. It's a good group, eager, quick, and she wonders if this is how she looked in the beginning, so _new_, color in her cheeks and tight lines of concentration around her eyes, and she wonders, even though she does not want to, how many of them will die before they have ever really even had a chance to live.

Fifty percent: they say that is how many of your classmates will perish before their first exam, in training accidents, in ill-advised trips beyond the walls of Garden before they are ready, before they can properly stock or cast or shoot, before they understand that monsters outside the walls are not carefully divided into levels and penned away in separate little areas that can only be accessed by a student I.D. card.

Once you are beyond the walls you are on your own.

Twenty percent of her classmates learned this the hard way; thirty percent were zipped silently away into crackling black plastic bags when they forgot that magic is not something to be conquered, but understood; forty percent discovered the death that comes down like rain from the skies during their first SeeD exam.

But she never wanted to be on her own, and she has always realized that magic is something to be coaxed, worked alongside, that when the sky fills with the chatter of a thousand stinging little droplets of death, you _duck_, you throw yourself behind a rock, a hill, a building, and you do not lift your head until it is over, until the instructors come to fill their bags with all the little pieces of your friends.

She made it through into the ten percent and somehow Seifer did as well, and she will never understand this for as long as she lives.

She survived by keeping her head down.

He did the same by running straight out into that steel-jacketed rain, by swinging and leaping and never coming up for air. They brought him in riddled with half a dozen neat little holes and a smile on his face, and when they pumped him full of sedatives before wheeling him off to the infirmary, he looked straight at her and he slurred something about a tire swing and fireworks and then his eyes rolled back in his head and he did not look at her again for a very long time.

She sat up beside him all night in the infirmary, watching the blind-filtered moonlight move across his face, and she thinks now about how smooth his forehead was back then, how _young _he looked in that blind-filtered moonlight: not nearly twenty at all, but years younger, a decade-

Someone calls her name from the front of the training room, and she jerks her head up to see a third year cadet standing there with both hands folded neatly behind his back, head high, chin straight. "Headmaster Martine needs to see you at the front gate. You're being put on a mission. He says grab what you need, enough for a few days, and then meet him there along with the rest of your teammates."

She straightens out a wrist she has absently grabbed, and shoots a look toward Instructor Marks, who waves her dismissively away. "All right. You can tell him I'll be there in just a few minutes." She already has a bag packed; she keeps one tucked away beneath her bed for instances such as this. It's a simple matter of double-checking to be sure all her spare clothes and toiletries are in their place, three minutes tops, to reach her dorm room one floor up, verify the bag's contents, and hurry back down to meet him.

She walks briskly through the door and out into the wax-polished hallway.

She wonders who has been assigned to accompany her.

Not Seifer, with any luck.

* * *

She has no luck.

Hyne hates her.

Seifer grins up at her from where he lounges back against the front gate, dressed in his civilian gear: a plain white Garden-issue shirt and stark black uniform pants, his trench coat slung casually across one arm.

"_Instructor_. How nice to see you again."

Headmaster Martine shoots him a look.

She wraps her hand so tightly around the handle of her bag the leather digs down into bone.

It irritates her immensely that such a good-looking man is also such an _ass_. He should have either the common decency to be ugly, or humble.

But she supposes Hyne doesn't gift with both hands.

The problem with Seifer Almasy is just how very _aware _he is of his looks, and the effect they have on women of all ages. A smile, a second glance, and they are his, tittering nervously on away down the hall, one hand over their mouth, eyes cast shyly back over one shoulder, gushing journal entries already penned in their heads: _Dear diary; Today _Seifer Almasy's _eyes met mine and we made this _connection_! I know he felt it too; it was something in the soul, you know? What do you think our babies will look like? _She suspects this is why he hangs around her so much, because he just cannot fathom that there exists a woman who is not utterly enthralled by his masculine charm. Who is _she_, to not flutter and swoon and hover timidly whispering outside the free weights section of the gym as he goes about his daily routine?

"Just the two of us?" she asks, curling her fingers a little deeper into the leather handle of her bag.

"No," Martine replies, just as Squall rounds the corner of the building and something breaks off inside her chest and wings away into her throat.

She is still struck by the sight of him.

She is twenty-two and she has killed men and women and children, and she is still all butterfly gut and hummingbird heart just _seeing _him, just taking him in and holding the shape of his face inside her mind and she will never stop _hoping_, for a look, a smile, a _something_.

Seifer rolls his eyes and flips his trench coat up over his shoulder.

"Hello, Squall," she says brightly, like she has completely forgotten what transpired between them the night before, like he did not break her down into tiny pieces and feed her back her smoking ash remains, and to look at him -bland glass eyes, no smile- she thinks that even if she has not forgotten -will _never _forget- he very well may have.

He nods.

He says nothing.

She wishes Seifer wouldn't look at her so intently, would not watch her so closely while she is trying to keep this smile pasted on her face; it's so _hard _to keep it pinned neatly where it belongs, and she does not need his _scrutiny_, his _judgment_-

"I can't babysit Puberty Boy and still concentrate on getting in Instructor Trepe's pants," Seifer complains.

"_Almasy_."

Sometimes she thinks he is happiest when he is in trouble, when he is being dressed down, scolded, punished. Perhaps there is some kind of freedom in it, in never having to worry about when your next misstep might or will or could occur; he has already taken it, has already set into motion actions he cannot take back, and at least if he has made a mistake, he knows he has done it on his own terms and no one else's.

Sometimes…she thinks this might be nice.

Sometimes she thinks that maybe, just once, she would like to test her bonds, to strain against her leash, to scramble over the wall and drop breathlessly down on its other side.

"Irvine Kinneas, Selphie Tilmitt, and Zell Dincht have all been sent on ahead to the train station; the three of you are the last. You will meet them at the station and take the last train to Timber, where you will divide yourselves up into two teams. As the highest ranking SeeD on this mission, I leave the division of those teams up to your discretion, Instructor Trepe."

She feels a little thrill zip itself all the way down into the tips of her toes at this title.

"A small terrorist group has formed in Timber to repel the Galbadian soldiers there. It is known as the 'Forest Owls', and recent intelligence gathered by the army suggests that a possible kidnapping plot involving President Deling is in the works by this group. The army has requested our help in infiltrating this organization and taking out anyone associated with it. You will be strictly civilian only; no uniforms. You will go in undercover, get a feel for the town and the overall feelings of the townspeople toward this organization, see if you can weed out any sympathizers. You know what to do with them, of course. You will report to me every twenty-four hours with updates." He folds his hands in front of him. "Any questions?"

Seifer raises his hand.

"In the case that we are captured, or these 'Forest Owls' turn out to be an unwashed nudist colony who have sex with trees and jump in new members by anally raping them with their rank hippy fists, do we have permission to self-terminate?"

"You are welcome to do so at any time, SeeD Almasy," Martine snaps.

"Well, _Instructor _Trepe and I will just eat some hallucinogenic mushrooms and do that kama-sutra sex thing or whatever, but I was hoping Pubes here could hit the big red 'Do not push' button you guys installed when you built him."

She narrows both eyes behind her glasses and tightens her cold white fingers around her bag, and suddenly to her horror she hears a little _laugh _hiss itself between her teeth, a flat little hastily-stifled thing that is not quashed quickly enough, because all three of them suddenly swivel around to look at her, and now hot fever flushes her cheeks and drains more blood from her arctic dead-wood fingers and oh _Hyne_, if she could only sink down into this pavement beneath her feet-

It is just…he _is _a little stiff, a little…_robotic_, standing here with that blandly expressionless look on his face and his bag slung over one shoulder, not smiling, not frowning, not interacting in any human way. It is like he is only a wax-doll replica of himself, carefully carved to resemble the real thing but imbued with none of the characteristics, the actions and reactions of a real human being.

It is like the sun comes out on Seifer's face, he lights up that brilliantly. Her tiny choked hiss of a laugh flips on something inside of him and now he just stands here, smiling at her, and something inside of her unfurls, snaps off another of these splinters that sometimes spin about inside of her, and she remembers-

She remembers a tire swing.

She remembers rain-rusted links beneath her fingers and blue sky above her and soft summer wind in her hair and someone -a boy- stopping the arc of her swing at its highest point-

"Leave," Headmaster Martine orders. "If I hear of _any _infractions on this mission -if you step one toe even slightly over the line, Almasy- you will be dropped a rank, and put on probation for a month. No missions, no training center, no weekend leave. You will write me a 20,000 word essay on the origin of Guardian Forces and their probable connection to Chocobos. You will look until you _find _a connection between Guardian Forces and Chocobos, do you understand? You are on thin fucking ice."

"Yes, sir," she says abruptly, and snaps him a crisp salute before Seifer can dig himself in even deeper.

"Your first report is due at 1500 hours tomorrow. Dismissed."

* * *

Why does she always feel like she needs to talk to him, anyway? He is perfectly fine, perfectly content here on this couch, staring mutely down at the magazine in his hands, feeling only the slick-gloss pages between his fingers and the polished arctic pressure of Lionheart against his thigh. He doesn't _need _someone to talk to.

She is annoying.

She tries to tell him about the history of Timber, how the hostility between it and Galbadia came to be, and he turns another page in his magazine and shifts Lionheart a little higher on his thigh, and he doesn't look up to say, "I'm not really interested."

She moves away eventually, drifts across the private SeeD cabin toward Seifer and Zell, who are loudly arguing over a round of Triple Triad.

He watches her without lifting his head, flipping another page, elbows on his knees.

He's never really been quite sure about her. There's…there's something about her, something he almost understands but not quite, something he almost…remembers, but the second his mind touches on it she is suctioned away into the same bright white void that little boy keeps getting lost inside, and whatever it is is obviously not important enough for him to hold onto, so why should he even try?

The boy in the rain who was afraid to be alone doesn't get that this is the only way to be, that this is _easier_, because one day Quistis Trepe and Seifer Almasy and Zell Dincht will all be gone, white stones in green grass that collect moss and maggots and all the dying things that autumn sweeps along on its cold tobacco wind.

He just made SeeD two months ago.

This is his first mission.

He might…he might not make it, isn't that right? Isn't that something he accepted when he signed up?

Did he ever sign up? He's not…he's not sure how he ended up at Garden. He wanted to be there…he thinks. He didn't have anywhere else to go, and Garden took him in and gave him a home and he might have to die young to pay back everything it's ever done for him, but that's-

That's ok.

He guesses.

He turns another page.

Two months ago he killed his first human, and he didn't stop after he did it, because you _can't_, because you keep running or you're next, but he spent the next several nights wondering what that man felt, when Lionheart slipped into his chest and came out the other side, and sometimes he still wonders if one day it will be him, if it happens too fast to hurt, if he will see something before he is taken away into the sky and trapped there forever.

He turns another page.

Quistis cocks her head, smiles at something Zell says, lays her slender little white hand down on his shoulder, and Squall wonders how you can take a hand like that, that has killed and butchered and slipped itself away inside of monsters to ferret out prizes hidden by instructors (Garden's version of a treasure hunt) and make it look so…frail.

She touched him with it the other day, passing him in the hall, just a quick little graze along his elbow, and he thought, _I can break this_, and for a moment this made him sick, made him want to know what the hell was _wrong with him_, but this is what he's _supposed _to do: bend and break, seek and destroy.

He turns another page.

He doesn't question what Garden tells them to do- don't think he does. He knows…he knows how little a human life is really worth (about twenty gil, in some of the worst parts of Deling City); that it's commerce, really, just another deposit in his bank account, but-

The boy in the rain.

Is he alone because he's waiting for someone who is never going to come home?

The first human life he ever took…did…did he have a boy waiting alone in the rain for him to come back, to swing him up onto his shoulders and piggyback him into the house where a pretty young wife was waiting even more hopefully?

Is it…is it ok that no one will ever wait for him to come home? One day he will be only a neatly-pressed uniform tucked away inside a box and his white stone in green grass will not have any visitors, and this is the way it's _supposed _to be, but how does it _feel_, to be lowered into that box, to lie still and cold and white beneath tap-tap-tapping raindrops of dirt clods that fill your eyes your nose your lips-

He snaps his magazine shut.

He is almost twenty-one and this is his first SeeD mission and he may not come back but he _wants _to, and if Garden knew this, if Garden _felt _this squeezing inside his chest, this pressure around his heart, this…this _thing _inside of him that fills him up until he is terrified he is going to _explode _with it-

The magazine slips out of his hands and its impact swivels Quistis' head around toward him, and Zell and Seifer go on arguing, and it's like he is _invisible _to both of them- is this how it's going to _be_-

He will be shut away inside a box and they won't even notice, _no one _will notice, and when they mention him at all, it will be past tense, beyond their concern-

"Squall?" Quistis asks, her hand slipping from Zell's shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," he mumbles.

He stares down at his upended magazine on the floor between his feet and laces his hands together between his knees, and he takes the deep breaths his first instructor taught him, and a loud shout from Seifer swivels her head back away from him, and now he is invisible to all of them.

It's…it's going to be fine.

He will live or he will die; he will be folded away inside a little lightless box or he will not.

He will be ok either way, he will not need help, he will not need _anyone_, and it'll be _fine._

He calmly picks up his magazine and this time he focuses on the pages; he does not look up to see why Quistis is laughing or Seifer is cussing; he lays the periodical open across his knees and hunches over it, elbows to thighs, and he does not look up for a very long time.

* * *

Big, big smile!

She's all fluttery inside, watching him move down the hall toward her, and she doesn't even know _why_, except maybe cuz it was kinda' cute the other night when he tried to ask her to dance and started sounding all chokey.

He looks all confident, you know? Ambling walk, casual smile that is just calculated enough that you just _know _he gets the kinda' effect it has on everyone, especially because he's _real _cute, rifle over his shoulder (ooh! His muscles go all bulgey with his gun positioned like that!), hat at just the right angle on his forehead. But her big, big smile kinda' falters him, you know? He stops walking all macho and swaggering, and his rifle slips, or his hand does- _something _does, because the weapon goes flipping off his shoulder and bangs real loud on the floor, and she _tries_ to, she really does, because he's real, real red, but she just can't stop the giggle she claps one hand over her mouth to try and stifle.

He looks stunned. Kinda'…deflated.

He picks up his gun and tips his hat and mumbles something about going to see what the others are doing, and then he is gone, just like that.

She sighs and sags against the window and the fluttery feeling slowly melts away inside of her, and now she watches the hills dissolve one into another into another with her chin on her hand. It's so _cool_ watching them go by so fast, the thunderstorm of the wheels underneath her, the little musical dings and the automated voice over the PA system -she really, really loves it all. Trains are just so _neato_, you know? She hardly ever gets to ride them, and she's supposed to be really, really enjoying this, but something's…

Something's missing.

Ok, so maybe she has this itty bitty little teensy weensy crush on him; he's _really _cute, ok, and the other night at the dance he bent over her hand and kissed it like she was some kinda' _princess _or something -it was pretty cool. And then he winked and he straightened up and he asked her to dance, and that was right about the time his voice started sounding all weird, like he swallowed his Adam's apple or something, and then he said something about checking on the guy at the buffet table who was eating all the hot dogs, and just hurried away and left her there.

She's Selphie Tilmitt, booyaka! She should just go talk to him herself, not wait for him to make the first move, cuz _obviously _he's not that good at it. It's probably all her natural charm; it's kinda' overwhelming to people at first, 'cept to that big tall blonde meanie, who just said "Fucking shit; she talks even more than she used to," when he met her, which doesn't even make _sense_, but hey, Hyne made him pretty and obviously decided that was good enough.

You know, though…there's something kinda' familiar about him.

She leans her chin down harder onto her hand and presses her nose to the window, watching it fog over.

He's not such a meanie around her new roommate (who's got some real nice boobies on her; why couldn't Hyne pack a few more calories into _her _muffins?), though. It's kinda' funny, watching them, cuz Quisty's obviously just _sooo _oblivious, and hung up on that Squall dude, who's hung up on being all _mysterious and broody_.

The sun thaws and spills itself out over the clouds, and she watches a million different colors mix themselves together like paint and this is the best _bestest _part about trains, this feeling she gets, watching the sky and the hills and the clouds all tumbling and rolling and whipping past: it's like she can reach out and touch them, like there's all this distance and space and inch-thick glass in between them, but they're still so _close_, somehow, you know? In her line of work, you don't get a lot of time to just sit around and admire the sky and all the different patterns it inks into the clouds; you are shut away inside where the sun is only this vague heat-haze impression behind bullet-proof windows, and when you are finally allowed beyond the walls, it's all go go go! no time to stop; don't catch your breath, Selph, no time for that; shoot shoot shoot! duck; run; going going gone.

That's kinda' what being a mercenary's all about: going going gone. You watch your friends come and you watch them go, and they keep on going until they are gone, poof, say a couple pretty words, Mr. Headmaster: Timmy was a nice kid from a nice family but the monster, he didn't care, and he broke Timmy into little bitty pieces and he ate him whole.

Sometimes the families get a body to bury, but a lot of the time, they just get a uniform, singed a little along the edges, shredded into rags along the bottom, still embedded with all the little silver-gleaming pieces of shrapnel that killed their little boy or their little girl who died too soon, too ugly.

She slips her hand out from underneath her chin and folds her fingers together in front of her nose.

Some people believe Hyne is just a figment of story, a legend bent inward and looped backward and twisted around until one day he rose up and he walked free of this bent and looped and twisted legend to become a god, but what _she _believes, really really _really _believes, is that he's up there in that big bright blue-autumn sky, and he is listening, and he enjoys their talks.

He wants her to grow up old old _old_, probably something like _fifty_, and one day she'll sit on a porch with her two kids in her lap and she'll point to the sky and she'll go, "See, that's where Hyne lives, and if you're willing to talk, he's willing to listen."

So she talks.

She wants her pretty new roommate and the big blonde meanie to be all right, to get through this mission just fine, to fall in love and get married and have babies (maybe he won't be _quite _so mean then); she wants Zell and Mr. Cranky Pants Squall and Irvine to not come home in little zippered bags, to go on eating hot dogs and being cranky and smiling in ways that make her insides all melty.

So please Hyne keep them all safe and maybe just help her teensy tiny little baby apples grow into big round mutant ones! Selphie out!

* * *

She curls up on the couch and listens to the wheels of the train hum and clack and vibrate far below her, and she tries to sleep. The couch gives underneath her as someone -Seifer, probably- settles in beside her, and she turns over onto her stomach, flattens her face into the pillow beneath her cheek.

She's been to Timber before.

She shot a girl there, once. Her father was a mission, another level to add to her rank, a thousand gil in her account, and this little girl…she just got in the way. It happens, sometimes.

She doesn't want to talk about it.

The girl comes to see her in her dreams sometimes, though, and she wants to know why she only got ten years, why daddy had to go away right after her, why mommy followed soon on their heels, one bottle of pills and an ambulance that came too late to save her later.

She read that in the paper, two weeks later: **Woman Discovered Dead In Her Bathroom Early Sunday Morning. **

_Stricken with grief over the loss of her husband and daughter to an as-yet unidentified home invader, Marla Denktsu took her own life sometime late Saturday night and was discovered by authorities early the next morning, when a neighbor became concerned over Marla's failure to answer her phone or her door. _

The man dipped his fingers into the wrong side of Galbadian politics; the girl was in the wrong place, wrong time, related to the wrong man, and she paid for it in spilt blood and tiny mewling cries like some kind of little wounded kitten, curled up at the reflexively twitching feet of her dying father.

She didn't mean to hit her. It was her first mission, and the girl ran to her father at just the wrong moment, and she jerked the trigger just exactly the way her weapons instructor always told her not to, and then she went home to make her report to Martine, and she spent the rest of the night curled around her toilet, vomiting weakly into its cold porcelain bowl.

She was bumped up a rank, praised, congratulated by passing instructors and cadets alike on a job well done.

"Collateral damage happens," they told her. "Don't beat yourself up about it."

She was given a monetary bonus for her swift and anonymous handling of the situation, and she went on with her life, she lived through another season and watched another fall turn the trees into brittle cinnamon skeletons, and the girl did not.

She shifts on the couch, feels whoever has settled themselves in beside her gently lift her feet, set them back down in their lap, and at least now she knows for certain it isn't Squall.

She can pretend, though.

"Man, I'm tired all of a sudden."

"Keep your voice down, Wuss."

"Sorry; wouldn't want to wake Quisty up. She'll hit you for sitting that close to her… Quisty!"

"Shut the _fuck up_."

"_You _shut the fuck up, man. You're just jealous because I totally creamed you at Triple Triad. Like, I haven't seen anyone get beat that hard since-"

"Your penis discovered gay porn for the first time?"

"Shut up, asshole!"

"I thought you said you were tired? Why don't you quit yapping and go curl up in the corner like a good dog?"

"I said _shut up_!"

She presses her cheek down harder into the pillow underneath her.

The train rocks her toward a cliff. A step will carry her away into fog, down into dreams, and she is right there, hovering _so close_-

Something is wrong.

There is something different about this dream fog.

Beyond this fog, she hears the door to the SeeD cabin swish open, Selphie's voice: "I don't feel so good," a man's voice-

A man's voice inside her head that sweeps away all the fog, pulls it aside like a curtain, and she feels someone slump heavily against her and hears someone thud even more heavily against the floorboards of the cabin and what is _happening _she is being pulled down how does she get _out_-

"Uhh, Laguna, are you sure this is the right way?"

Laguna- who the hell is _Laguna_-

"Hoo boy, not again."

Please someone tell her what's happening; she is _frightened_; why is she being sucked away -_where _is she being sucked away- will she be put back together when this is all over-

"Guys? Guys?! Oh, man, I don't feel so good either. Maybe it was all those hot dogs last night…"

She hears a final thud, a last meat-thud report of falling limbs and impacting cheekbone and in front of her unfolds a jungle, the broad blue-armored shoulders of a man she does not know and yet somehow recognizes, and she tips forward over the cliff and is swept away by the tide-

* * *

_I killed twenty-two monsters today, stumbling through this jungle. Three Funguars, two Elnoyles, five Abyss Worms, twelve Bite Bugs. It's nasty work; you wouldn't _believe _how hard exploded Bite Bug is to get outta' your uniform, but they're not humans, at least. _

_ At least they're not humans._

_ The jungle winds down this little path we have to travel single file, it's that narrow, and I heft my gun over my shoulder and pick up the pace to close some of the distance between us, because if those two won't stop ribbing me about getting us lost again -and hey, guys, it's not 'lost', it's an investigative detour, you know, material for me to write about when I pick up a career in journalism- I'm at least getting close enough to wallup 'em one good._

_ I wipe my mouth, look down at the back of my hand with a scowl, kneel down to rub the guts from my fingers into the grass. "Hey, guys, you ever notice Bite Bug tastes a little like chicken?"_

_ "Heh?" _

_ Laguna Loire's Recipes From Around the World:_

_ 1 lbs. Bite Bug, cubed_

_ 1 tbs. olive oil_

_ ½ tsp. coriander seed_

_ ½ tsp. garlic powder_

_ 1 tsp. What's the one spice that smells a little like sweaty man? I'll go back and pencil that one in later_

_ Sautee Bite Bug in olive oil until browned; add coriander seed, garlic powder and sweaty man spice. Mix well. Add choice of vegetables. Impress your friends with your culinary flair: garnish with a little T-Rexaur! _

_ Aww, man; now I'm hungry. _

_ "We gotta' hurry, guys. Julia's playing at the hotel today."_

_ "You just saw her a couple of weeks ago."_

_ "Yeah, but I didn't have a chance to talk to her; this time I'm gonna' go right up to her and introduce myself, sweep her off her feet."_

_ "You mean sit at your usual table and stare at her like someone who has a waiting rape van parked out back?" _

_ "_No!_ Julia and I have a real connection," I protest, my gun slipping a little on my shoulder; I adjust it, shrug it higher, slide its stock up against the side of my neck. "I mean, you guys can sense that, right?" _

_ "I sense a police investigation in your future, yes," Kiros replies dryly. _

_ Ward laughs._

_ "Shut up! Neither one of you get it, man." _

_ "Last time you tried to go talk to her your leg cramped up so bad you spent the next hour stumbling around the bar hitting yourself in the thigh."_

_ "Remember when she got up, and he tried to chase after her to prove us wrong, and his whole leg went out from underneath him? And he reached up for something to grab onto, and got the waiter, and the poor guy went flying, spilled all this soup all over him and Laguna?"_

_ "Yeah; I thought Julia's hysterical laughter was encouraging, though. Women like a guy who can make them laugh." _

_ Jeez, would you _listen _to these two- like I'm some kind of bumbling _idiot._ The guy was _fine _and he didn't even spill that much soup, and Julia's laugh wasn't _hysterical_: it was this cute little giggle she covered up with one hand, and she was starting toward me, she _was_, and then her manager swept her away and the army sent us off to Timber, and today I return a changed man, a _confident _man, who will walk up to her with a smile and an outstretched hand-_

_ And, uh, that's about as far as I get in my fantasies. I mean, hey, it's not like I'm not a red-blooded male with all the x-rated boob mind-pictures that entails, but Julia, she's different. She's _classy_; I'd like to bend her right over her piano in that beautiful red dress and-_

_ Whoa! Take the scissors to that one: snip, snip, editor; this is a family account, or at least it will be one day, when some famous magazine picks up Laguna Loire's Travels for publication. _

_ I've seen a lot, in the army; been all over, so far, with a lot more to come, and I think I've got something worth saying. I mean, who wouldn't want to read about a handsome young thing like me, traveling the world, fighting evil, winning hearts- they could make a movie outta' my life! I'd be played by that one…uh…that guy that's real popular right now with the kids…ol' what's-his-name…_

_ Eh, never mind. Not important. Someone good-looking, someone charismatic, someone who makes people sit up and take notice, who makes them say, "Man, that Laguna guy, what a _guy_! Wish I had his life; wish he were my friend. Wish I was half that handsome, that good with the ladies." _

_ My first article will begin like this: _

_ My story begins here, in this city of motion and lights, of perpetual _going_: Deling City, where my mother-_

_ No. _

_ I don't want to start there. My mother, you see, she-_

_ Ah, never mind. _

_ Give 'em a hook, this one guy told me once. Found him in a bookstore, signing copies of some novel I'd never heard of before, but I picked it up anyway and I watched him scribble his name across the front cover with a flourish, and when he was done (not much of a line behind me; kind of an out-of-the-way thing, this bookstore) he had me pull up a seat across from him, and we talked. _

_ "I want to be a writer," I told him, and he laughed. _

_ "You don't _want _to be a writer; you are, or you aren't," he said, and forget what your own mother told you, about how you can be anything you want: in this he was right, and I never forgot it, and when I sat up in bed one night, snapped straight up out of my dreams and scurried around in my nightstand beside me for a pen and some paper, I knew writing was a calling, that it had chosen me, that I was meant to heft not a gun but a pencil. _

_ But Galbadia went to war with Timber and the army needed me, and the rest is history, as they say, or it will be one day. I put down my pencil and I picked up my gun and I killed my first man, and I have not written a word since, because if I did, they would all be about this first man and the son he left behind, and the mother who lays violets on his grave every week. _

_ I leave daffodils. I wanted to say I was sorry, forgive me, it was my job and I didn't mean it, but the local florist told me to bring daffodils instead._

_ Daffodils, for rebirth, new beginnings. I thought this was almost as good, because that's what I hope, that somewhere else he got to start over._

_ His story did not end in a pine box, underneath six feet of mildewed grave dirt. _

_ I never told that local florist who they were for; I'm sure she assumed I was on the wrong end of some kind of lover's spat. That's ok; she can make up whatever kinds of stories she wants, chalk me down to some jerk crawling back home from the bendy neighbor's bedroom. _

_ There are worst things to be sorry for, after all, than infidelity or dishonesty or forgetting to do the dishes on your night. _

_ We find our truck through this tangle of green undergrowth and monsters, and all the way back to Deling City I think about this man and the way he just….stopped seeing. _

_ I put my gun to his head and I blew his brains all over the wall behind him and he slumped over at my feet and then my commanding officer calmly wiped brain matter from his cheek and told me I was dismissed. _

_ The guy was leaking information to Timber; he got an entire platoon wiped out, thanks to his early warning to his friends on the other side. He was a traitor and in the Galbadian army traitors are executed, no ifs ands or buts, especially not when you're caught red-handed the way this guy was, but still…_

_ Still. _

_ He had a son and a mother and he thought he was doing the right thing; he fought to protect his family and his friends and his home, just like I do, and he-_

_ He looked me right in the eye while I held that gun to his head, and he kneeled there with his hands behind his head and all these slow silent tears leaking down his face, but he didn't say a word. _

_ Not one word. _

_ I think about this all the way back to Deling City, all the way to the hotel where she waits at her piano, head cocked, smile on her face, and I slide into my usual seat and drink my usual drink and for a long time I just watch._

_ Maybe that guy had someone like this._

_ Maybe he had someone whose smile lit up his whole world and he was going to come back and marry her and present his son with a real mother, and maybe they were all going to live happily ever after and I took that away from all of them._

_ I went in and I red-penned the whole ending and I re-wrote it, and what I came up with was a hack job, amateurish crap._

_ When she turns her smile toward me, all this is wiped away, and oh crap, ah _man_, there goes my leg, and I hear Kiros start to snicker, and now Ward ducks his head down over his own drink to hide his grin, and _forget these two_; they don't know crap._

_ I'm gonna' do it this time._

_ Because that man is dead and I am alive, and I can't stop living just because he did. Maybe I killed him but I had friends in that platoon, and he sent them all to their deaths, and it's not like I believe in the whole eye for an eye thing, but when I set down my pencil and I picked up my gun, I _knew_._

_ I ain't so dumb as my military I.D. card would suggest. _

_ I knew some of us would not make it out and I knew that one day I was gonna' have to be the one to make sure not everyone went home to their families. _

_ I reach my hand down to knead my leg and I stand._

_ Julia's finished her piece. _

_ I take one step forward and my leg just sort of folds underneath me, and I make a swipe for the table, white-knuckle the edge until I can get my equilibrium back, and she's watching me so _expectantly_, so patiently, and ahhhh I can't do it! She's got these big eyes and she's so _pretty_, and what the hell am I even supposed to _say_, without making myself look like an ass?_

_ I hobble back to the table._

_ "Good work, Laguna," Kiros congratulates me._

_ "Mission successful." _

_ "Aw, shut up, both of you!"_

_ Kiros nudges my chair back out with the toe of his boot. "Have a seat." He swirls the drink in his hand, sends the ice cubes clink clink tinking off one another. "You cut a pretty pitiful figure up there. I'd say that was about a negative three on the manliness scale." _

_ "Hey, I'm just getting started! I'm _going_; I am."_

_ "Uh huh."_

_ "Excuse me?"_

_ Have you ever had a moment when your heart literally just stops, when it stumbles right over a beat and jerks unsteadily into the next? I am a soldier and I have had many of these moments, but the most never-wracking of them all is here, now, with her voice and her perfume wafting over my shoulder and my leg _seizures_, and I clamp one hand down over it as Ward and Kiros subtly excuse themselves, and hey, hey, wait now-_

_They're really _leaving _me-_

_Julia smiles down at me. _

_I press my sweaty fingers into my thigh and stretch my lips into something I hope at least vaguely resembles a smile, and man oh man, this close she's even prettier- help someone _please _what the hell do I _say_-_

_"I'm sorry; I wasn't interrupting something, was I?"_

_"Uh…no?"_

_Jeez, Laguna man, just talk to her like you actually pee standing up. _

_ "May I sit down?" She smiles again._

_ My brain flips a switch and the lights go out and I say brilliantly, "Uhhhh…" My leg twitches; I'm pretty sure my eye does too. _

_ Beautiful; just beautiful. Add some questionable bladder control and this is the story of my Uncle Herman courting his first-grade crush all over again. _

_ "The seat? Uh, yeah, sure, take it, take it; no one's sitting there it's empty so you can just go ahead and sit right down in it if you really want here you go let me pull that out for you-" I fumble it of course, and it tips, goes flying backward right into her graceful manicured fingers, and she tilts it back upright with another smile and scrapes it out and now she slips herself smoothly into it. _

_ "Thank you." _

_ Her voice is just as nice as her…face, look at her face, Laguna!_

_ "Yyyeah, yeah, please, sit down; you're already sitting down I guess aren't you so that's pretty redundant; hey, you ever think redundant's kinda' a funny word? It just sounds kind of weird and how necessary is it really because we already have all these-"_

_ "How's your leg doing?" she interrupts gently, and I reflexively rub my thigh, tuck it carefully away under the table out of her sight. _

_ "My leg?"_

_ "Yes; I saw you stand up, and it seemed like…it seemed like you might have some kind of injury or something." _

_ "No, no; it's fine. It's just uh…actually, yeah, it's this old wound I got fighting in the war; it just flares up when it's cold out."_

_ She furrows her brow. "It's July."_

_ "Well, it, uh…you see, it really needs like, desert type conditions: nothing but the best for my little buddy…uh, that probably sounded like I was referring to something else; I was talking about my leg, not the third one, or something, you know, but the-" Oh man oh man oh man oh man STOP TALKING- _

_ She presses her fingers discreetly to her lips. "Is it ok now?"_

_ "Yeah; feels fine. Just got a little cramp in it. They teach you to just shake that kind of stuff off in the army. You have to be real, real manly to even join." _

_ She presses her fingers to her lips again and ducks her head. "I'm sure." _

_ My leg knocks into the underside of the table and vibrates the whole thing; I slap my palm down over the top of it and dig all my fingers in, hold on for dear life. _

_ "I see you in here a lot, Laguna."_

_ "You- you know my name?"_

_ "Yes; the bartender gave it to me. I was curious; I see you in here all the time with your friends, and I've always meant to come say hi to you, but, well, you often slip out before I've finished my set. I'd like to…I mean, if you don't mind, of course…I'd like to talk with you a little, get to know you. Do you have time?"_

_ I have all the time in the _world_; I have all the time in a thousand _thousand _worlds; see if I don't stay here until I put down roots in the chair; I'll listen _forever_, because just being this close to her-_

_ "Laguna?" _

_ I look up from Julia's pretty polished fingers where they have crept their way onto the table, halfway across the slick shining oak surface toward mine, and there is Ward, poking his head through the opening of the room, his lips this thin little white line in his equally colorless face. "We gotta' move out; there's heavy fighting in the woods outside Timber. They need reinforcements on the front lines; we just lost most of one of the platoons they sent in a few days ago." _

_ I relax the claw of my right hand and fold it into a fist on top of my thigh. "Oh." _

_ I know…knew men in those platoons. _

_ I wonder if their stories have ended in pine boxes under six feet of mildewed grave dirt._

_ Ward has already disappeared. I can hear his heavy footsteps on the carpeting outside in the main hotel lobby. "Uh, Julia, I'm, I'm really sorry-"_

_ "I understand, Laguna. You don't have to apologize." She unwinds her fingers, and reaches across the table for the hand on top of my thigh. _

_ Her palm is so warm. I wish…I wish this moment would last the way those in foxholes do, all stretched out, strung long and tight, moments blurring into minutes smudging into hours. A foxhole minute takes both a second and a day, and I wish that this moment would reach itself out that far, into tomorrow, beyond, I wish it would keep going, because something they never spell out for you is that you wake up each day in mud and blood and crap just glad to be alive, just so _grateful _for the wet air in your lungs and the dirt under your fingernails and the burning in your exhausted rubber muscles. _

_ I will go away and I won't know if I will ever come back, and I never had anything more than this with her. _

_ "Julia…" I flex my fingers underneath hers and I draw from some unknown reserve of courage, and I tip my hand upside down and let my fingers find hers; I lock us together, palm to palm, for just as long as I can stall. "Can I…uh…when I…if I come back…can I see you?" _

_ She slides her other hand over the top of mine and the candlelight from the center of the table skates itself over her cream-colored skin, and if I had my paper and my pencil, this is the moment I would capture, mark down to be preserved forever. _

_ Maybe my first article begins here, with a look and a promise and a good-bye. _

* * *

_ I don't like quiet mornings that come after loud nights._

_ I don't trust them._

_ It's when the guns stop chattering and the people stop screaming that you know something is wrong; something is coming; you can just bend down between your legs now and kiss your ass good-bye. _

_ "It's hot as balls out here, huh, Laguna?" _

_ "Yeah, Jin," I say to Ward's little brother. He's trying to grow some facial hair, I see in the early morning light. I guess you could call it a moustache, if you squint one eye and stick out your tongue and tip your head all the way down to your shoulder. _

_ He's too young to be out here. I mean, I'm no gramps, but he joined just a year ago at eighteen, and when you're not even of legal drinking age, you're too young to be out here in the woods with the rest of us, waiting to kill or waiting to die. _

_ The trees are packed so closely around us they are like one impenetrable black wall, dense with shadow and patrolling soldiers, guns drawn, helmets low, boots sounding these little muffled heartbeats in the dirt underneath us. I hunch down into our foxhole, lay my gun across my thighs, rub both sweaty hands down my sides; your weapon doesn't do a whole lot of good if you can't hang onto the damn thing. _

_ "You think they'll be here soon?" Jin whispers._

_ I think they'll be here whenever we least expect it._

_ I think I'm going to die today. _

_ I don't know why. I guess what they say about someone walking over your grave is true, huh? You feel it crawling down your spine, congealing in your gut. The first brush of those footsteps graze themselves all the way down your neck onto your back, and you keep wondering why the Hyne hell can't I stop _shivering_, and then you step out in front of a bus or you take the wrong alleyway or you decide no siree, you mugger asshole, you ain't gettin' _my _wallet. _

_Someone whistles. _

_I peek my head up over the top of our hole. _

_Patrol time._

* * *

_I walk up and down between the trees. _

_I see nothing through the veil of all their branches. _

_I wonder how Kiros and Ward are doing on the other side of the woods, where I think I can very distantly make out the sounds of guns firing, grenades blowing. _

_The worst part…it's not wondering whether you'll come home._

_It's wondering whether you'll have anything to come home to._

* * *

_Sometime around 1200, Jin pulls out his Triple Triad deck. _

_I play distractedly, gun over one leg, and the kid completely annihilates me. He's a pretty good winner, though, like his big brother, and not that son-of-a Kiros, who always rubs my face in his victories. _

_"Do you ever…do you ever think about what it's like to die?" he asks very quietly after the third round, and I scratch my head and flip over one of my cards, and man oh man, how do I answer this one? _

_"You don't have to worry about it," I tell him. _

_ "Yeah, but you don't _know _that. This guy I knew…the other day, we were fighting near the front, right at the very edge of the trees, and I was talking to him while we were shooting, trying to keep him calm 'cause he was freaking out, and I turned around and…his…his whole face was missing. Some guy came around our flank and stabbed him right through the _face_, Laguna." _

_ "Worry about it when you die, Jin. Don't get hung up on it, ok? Besides, you know you can't die, because your brother'll get all blubbery and man that is just _not _pretty. I only saw it happen once, when the mess was out of pie."_

_ He smiles, and stretches his hand out to take my cards. He shuffles them again, re-deals._

_ We play for a long time._

* * *

_ They pour over the crest of the hill between the trees while I am half-asleep, helmet tilted down over my eyes, head dangling limply onto my chest. _

_ "Laguna!" Jin cries, and hits me on the shoulder._

_ I jerk upright, spill my helmet off to one side, and there they are, there they _are _son of a Hyne bitch _hell _there are so _many _of them-_

_ We are the reinforcements. They have made it all the way back to us, through the front line._

_ There is no front line. _

_ Inside the trees, every sound is magnified a thousand times, bouncing from trunk to trunk, leaping, tumbling, scaling higher and higher and higher, each scream competing with every greenstick snap of breaking bone, all these noises thundering against my skull, trying to pound their way inside, and now I cast; I shoot; I throw. _

_ I duck. _

_ I do not breathe._

_ Jin wings a Fira ten feet ahead of us and I use the momentary distraction this provides to pop up from my cover, lay down a spray of bullets that jerk our enemies around like puppets on their strings. _

_ Jin reloads._

_ I cast._

_ Jin fires._

_ We both hunch back down behind our dirt wall, and my rabbit heart thuds inside my throat and knocks around in my wrists and Jin sucks wind like an asthmatic and we both fire; reload; throw ourselves down with arms tucked over our heads as somewhere nearby an explosion rains stinging black-dirt downpour onto our backs-_

_ "We need to fall back!" I scream. "They're overrunning the guys at the front! They're going to come right over the top of us!"_

_ Jin does not need to be told twice: he pitches his gun over the side of the foxhole and rolls himself up across the lip of it, into the bone dust and brain pulp of a dozen other men less lucky than us, and we _run_; we shoot our way through and we do not stop and a few dozen feet later, we drop down into an unoccupied foxhole and Jin fumbles his magazine into his gun, hands shaking, and I slip the barrel of my own weapon up over the lip of this new hiding place, and the kickback busts me a good one in the shoulder because I forgot to pull it tight into my body. _

_ I barely even feel this collision through all the adrenaline._

_ I fire._

_ I reload._

_ I hear Kier Lund scream and I watch him burst into flames, go down still burning, and I fire._

_ Jin casts._

_ I listen to my jackhammer pulse and my wheezing deathbed breath, and I slide my slick hands down my thighs, and beside me Jin cries out, drops down holding his shoulder-_

_ "You ok?"_

_ "It grazed me," he says, pulling his hand back to inspect the damage. "I'm good." _

_ "You gotta' Cure?"_

_ "Couple of them, yeah. Cover for me, would ya'?" he asks, and I swing myself into his spot as he presses himself against the back wall, and around me the forest is all writhing shadows and volcano earth, geysering up and splitting apart into more black-dirt downpour, and I keep the trigger pressed tight to the guard until my gun clicks empty. _

_ "Toss me another, mag!" I yell, and something smacks into my outstretched palm, and I slap it home and rack the slide and keep on firing. _

_ Something sings past my left ear and shit shit _shit _that was close; I feel this hot wet trickle down the side of my face, and I wonder if Julia will still want to see me, with part of my ear lobe missing._

_ "Jin!"_

_ "I'm fine. We're low on ammo, though, Laguna. We're gonna' need to move again."_

_ "You got anything still stocked?"_

_ "Yeah; some fire spells, couple of Blizzagas, few Cures and Curas still left. I'm ok for now."_

_ "All right, then switch spots with me for right now. I need to reload anyway. Lay down some cover; there's a group right off to our left, all close together- you cast something in there, I bet you can get a whole bunch of them at once."_

_ I turn to crouch-walk my way back to take his place. _

_ Sometimes inside these foxholes, you start off talking to a man, a real live, flesh-and-blood man, and when you turn around, you are conversing with just a uniform and the meat left behind inside of it. _

_ I kneel in the mud with bullets whistling overhead and grenades thundering nearby and the trees flashing red/blue/green, these little splashes like paint getting sloppily heaved onto a canvas just flaring all around me, Blizzaga, Water, Fira, all of them thrown together into this melting pot that is war, and I just…I just keep kneeling. _

_ Oh, Ward. Ward…what am I gonna' tell you? How do I break this? _

_ I shut his eyes._

_ Maybe my first article begins here, with a uniform who was once a boy called Jin Zabac, who liked the color green and had a dog named Keiko. _

* * *

_ Four months later, the army lets me take my first extended leave in half a year. _

_ I go to the hotel. _

_ The piano bench is empty. _

_ The bartender tells me Julia left on tour one month ago._

_ He doesn't know where she went. _

_ I sit at my usual table nursing my usual drink and I'm there for a very long time, until the bartender begins wiping down tables and slipping bottles back into their racks, and when he politely tells me it's time to leave, I scatter some gil across the table and step outside into the cold November night. _

_ I inhale exhaust and the smell of thunder coming. _

_ From Laguna Loire's Travels:_

_ My story begins here, inside this city of motion and lights, of perpetual _going_: Deling City, where there is a hotel that launched a career and broke a heart. Soft beds, four-star service, great food._

_ I recommend the shrimp alfredo, or, for you adventurous types, the grilled Toroma. Covered in this awesome mustard sauce, served with your choice of baked sweet potato or grilled vegetables; goes down great with a Bloody Funguar. _

* * *

"Next stop Timber…Timber…next stop…Timber…"

The fuck…wazzat…Timber?

Timber…yeah, Timber…dead kid…hafta' tell Ward…no…

…he already broke the news, didn't he…held the guy while he broke down and sobbed like a baby…

"Next stop Timber…"

Yeah, bitch, _thanks_, he fucking gets it; you _mind_-

Julia…guess the bitch just decided fuck it, she doesn't have to wait around for some moron…got better things to do…gonna' be famous…

_He's _gonna' be famous, too, you know…

Gonna' write for a big magazine…

No, what…he doesn't give a shit about writing; the last attempt he made went something like 'Roses are red, your eyes are so blue, I've got a hard-on for you'. Quistis said it lacked both creativity and something about poetic rhythm or some shit, but fuck her anyway- the cowboy laughed.

He feels this little twitch spasm down through his numb wooden hand, scissoring all his fingers open, and now he slowly folds them shut once more and slips this numb wooden hand along the couch underneath him, bumping into something warm and soft and solid-

"Ungh. _Ow_."

He slowly peels his gummed-shut eyes apart, and in front of him is what he thinks is Quistis' ass; he's never seen it up this close before, but he's studied it a lot, and he likes to think he knows it pretty well.

Yeah, it's her ass.

His other hand is touching it.

His hand is on her _fucking ass _and it's still _attached _and he slept through _all of it_ god_fucking_dammit-

Squall sits slowly up from where he collapsed onto the floor, holding his head, and if the little shit would just lift his chin a little higher, he'd have something to take out all this pent-up rage on.

Squall's eyes cloud, slowly piece themselves back together into coherency. "What…were we all asleep?"

"Yeah; weird. Maybe someone released some sleeping gas in here? Lots of people resent SeeD. Maybe it was someone from Timber, y'know, the terrorist group," Zell replies.

"Why…" Squall shakes his head, rubs his forehead scar with a frown. "Why would they just put us to sleep? Why wouldn't they kill us? That doesn't make any sense."

"Oooh; owie! I fell right on my funny bone! Am I missing anything? Is everybody ok?"

"All parts intact over here, darlin'."

"Ooh, good! Everything's A-ok here! I had the nicest dream!"

Well, he _didn't_; he doesn't _care _about this dumbass, and he certainly doesn't want to have to fucking re-live all his painfully awkward attempts to put his penis in some bitch he doesn't care about either. Ellone and him are going to have a talk, when he gets back.

"Laguna was sooo cool! And really cute, too!"

"Huh? Laguna?" Zell stands carefully, putting one hand out to steady himself on the arm of the couch. "There was a Laguna in your dream?"

"Yeah! He was this Galbadian soldier and he was in love with this lady named Julia who played a piano and it was really sad in the end, because his friend's little brother died and when he went back for Julia she'd already left, but it was sooo romantic, at the same time! I bet he traveled all over the world, looking for her!"

"_What_?" Squall snaps.

Beside him, Quistis lifts herself slowly upright, smoothing her hair, a long red line of a pillow crease marring her pretty white skin.

He smiles and reaches over to wipe a streak of partially-dried drool from the side of her mouth with his gloved thumb. "Every time, Instructor."

When she blushes, it is so fucking cute he wants to kick himself in the sack for being such a goddamned moron sap.

"There was a Galbadian soldier named Laguna in my dream too!" Zell blurts out loudly, rubbing the side of his head.

"Really? Cool! Was he really cute, long dark hair, big blue eyes, kinda' like Squally's?"

"Uh, I dunno if he was cute or not. But, yeah, that sounds like him."

"Don't call me 'Squally'," Pubes mumbles under his breath. "Kiros, Ward, and Laguna, right?"

"Yeah! Did you dream about them, too?"

"…I don't get it. How could we have all had the same dream?"

"Funny, huh? Maybe we have this whole mind connection thing going on! I read this story one time where these kids had all these psychopathic…um, maybe it was _psychic _powers, and if they all thought really, really hard about something, together, they could make it happen! Do you think Laguna's really real? I hope he is! He's _really _cute, and Julia's so pretty, and I bet he just searched and searched and searched until he found her, and they got married and had some kids together!"

"I bet he got fat." Seifer leans forward to press his elbows down onto the tops of his knees.

Quistis slaps his thigh warningly.

"Fuck; what? He looked like an emotional eater."

Pubes rubs his scar some more, frowns some more, rolls his shoulders back until all the little tendons down his neck snap and pop and crackle like gunfire. "Whatever. It's not something we're going to figure out right now. Let's just report it to the headmaster when we get back."

"We will be arriving in Timber shortly; for those departing, make sure you have all your belongings."

Beside him, Quistis shakes the fog from her head. "How strange. I've never heard of anything like this before- sleeping gas wouldn't do this. It would just render us unconscious, not manifest the same dream in all our heads. What…" She shakes her head again, and hauls her bag by its strap up across her thighs. "Do you think…do you think we know this 'Laguna'? Maybe it wasn't a dream, exactly, maybe it was some kind of memory. Maybe we knew him a long time ago, and this was a story he told us, about his days during the war, about falling for Julia…do you think that's possible?"

He scratches the side of his jaw and lets his hand swing limply down to dangle between the open v of his knees. "It sounds like you read too much of that psychobabble bullshit where all dreams are supposed to have some kind of hidden meaning. Like when Wuss dreams about being a woman, it means that his 'penis' is really just an inside-out vagina. Well, that one's probably true at least."

"But we all dreamed _the same thing_, Seifer. That isn't normal. And it was so _vivid_. I heard his voice in my head; I felt Jin's eyelids underneath my fingers. I've never…I've never even had a dream like that before." She curls her fingers tightly around the black leather strap of her bag, and frowns down onto the tight pale-knuckled fists of her hands. "And sometimes I think there's something I'm supposed to remember…"

Him. She was supposed to fucking remember _him_, not this stupid goddamned _assclown_.

She pokes her glasses up her nose to sit perfectly level across the bridge and now her fingers twist harder into that black leather strap and these shallow little thought line elevens carve themselves into the smooth white skin between her eyebrows, and he slaps the hand dangling between the open v of his knees down on top of hers.

He jerks her to her feet. "Seifer-"

"Come on, Trepe. Everyone else is already leaving. Pubes needs a real man to show him what to do on his first mission."

"You mean insult everyone under the age of sixty-five and turn everything into some kind of crude phallic reference?" she asks dryly.

He smiles and yanks her along behind him toward the door. "Tch; I would _never _limit myself that way. Besides, that's fucking age discrimination, Trepe. I'm surprised at you."

The door hisses quietly shut behind them and he slings Hyperion over one shoulder, tipping its blade up toward the ceiling so Quistis doesn't take the thing through the eye.

She pulls her hand away, of course, but for this long, long moment he got to hold it, he got to press his fingers down tight into hers and remember when she used to let him do this willingly, and if Sis is going to go poking around through their heads anyway, why not throw him a fucking bone, huh? Why not give them all another memory?

Why not give _her _another memory: a boy who didn't want her to be lonely, who wrote her letters and called her names and loved her so fucking _hard_, before he even knew what the hell that word meant.

He watches her walk on ahead of him, back straight, head high, and his chest fucking _hurts_, watching this straight back and this regal head tilt, this moving away on down the hall without him.

Someday she's gonna' remember. Someday she will _know_. And if she doesn't...if she's still hung up on that twat...if she tells him Seifer Almasy is her past and Squall Leonhart is her future...

He will fucking shoulder it like his weapon, keep going, never stop barrelling on ahead.

He sweeps down the hallway toward the exit, coat snapping at his heels.

**A/N: So as you can see, the Laguna dream sequence changed quite a bit. What happened is that I started to write it as it appears in the game, and promptly got bored and did my own thing. See, I know myself well, and I knew this is exactly what would happen if I were to attempt a straight-up novelization: I'd get utterly bored writing a story I already knew, and abandon it for something more interesting. This enables me to tackle a novelization while still making it my own story, and I am really enjoying the journey so far. **

**Also, throughout all the one-shots, the long-winded novel-length fics, the little unpublished snippets here and there...I have never, ever tackled Selphie's perspective. This is my first time ever writing from her POV. I didn't once attempt it in over half a million words of fanfic, so you guys can probably guess how confident I am in handling her perspective. But you don't grow as a writer without trying new things, so in this story Selphie gets a voice, and I can only pray that I will achieve my intended balance between annoying and endearing. Thank you for reading; I hope you enjoy this latest offering, and that I didn't fuck up Laguna too badly. Feel free to tell me if I did a shit job, straying from the original game. **


	7. Interlude Three

**A/N: Just a very quick update today, because my weekend is about to explode with birthday celebrations. A big thank you to my reviewers; I'll leave you guys a longer/more personal note on the next chapter. I have to pretty much just sprint out my door after posting this.**

When the lights go out, she runs to her mattress, where all the stories are waiting.

She has tucked them away between mattress and frame, folded tightly inside their cardboard skeleton. It is a dusty, musty thing, worn white along the corners, rubbed raw against the spine, and she handles it carefully as she eases it out into her midnight-shadowed room.

Her flashlight clicks in her hand, wavers for a moment, and then trains its bright yellow-coin eye on the pages of her book.

It is full of pictures, garish colored things that are too childish for an eleven-year-old who has just tested out at a college-age level on her fifth grade reading comprehension test. Her skills have been far beyond these simple little illustrated tales for a very long time now.

But she likes them. The princess with the hair that goes on forever; the frog who was kissed by a girl and became a prince- she remembers the way Matron used to tell these stories, the voice she gave to the princess and the long full-throated _ribbit! _she lent to the frog. She remembers Seifer with his chin in his hand, listening attentively for once, and Irvine beside her, threading little pieces of broken-off stick into the laces of her shoe, and Selphie behind them, banging around somewhere in the kitchen, playing with Matron's pots. Squall always hung back from the rest of them, hovered at the fringes until Sis coaxed him up to the front and sat next to him holding his hand, and in the background would be Zell, acting out everything Matron narrated.

Sometimes when she feels lonely, when she begins to slip into self-pity, when she presses her tear-stained face into her pillow and wonders why her life is so much less _fair _than everyone else's, she remembers these moments, and she thinks about how it's not all bad, how it has never been all bad, and it never will be, even if she can't be the little girl her new parents want.

She hears them thumping around in the living room, looking for candles.

"This is the goddamned second time this _month_; I'm trying to fucking _work_. I need electricity for that."

"I know, I know. Calm down; it's not like the city's doing it on purpose. It'll come back on in an hour or so."

"It's just fucking _ridiculous_-"

She tiptoes over to her door and slides it all the way shut.

She is not scared. When he raises his voice and starts slamming things around the way Matron and Cid never did, she is not scared, because she has her stories and her memories and her letters, and she takes them out one by one by one now and smoothes them down over her knees and trains her flashlight's yellow-coin eye on their ink-smudged pages.

He kept writing her for a very long time. A year and a half; she thinks that's how long she's been here. He kept writing; he did not forget her; he told her about his dreams and he called her names and he drew her pictures, but he did not forget her.

The letters stopped coming a few weeks ago, but that's ok, because she has not written to him in at least a year, and if she hurt his feelings she's sorry, even if he is a big stupid jerk sometimes, but she can't keep lying; she can't keep making up stories about family trips to the beach and new toys and candy doled out from the hands of a father who barely even remembers that he has a daughter.

But Seifer tells her about all these things, and he is not lying, because he is still with Matron and Cid, and if she can't _really _have these things she can pretend (she's very good at pretending), and maybe it's selfish, but if he wrote to her for this long with nothing to show for it but silence, then he is lonely too; he misses her, and she _needs _this- she needs to know that somewhere across the ocean someone looks up at the same sky and thinks about where she is and what she's doing and why she stopped writing.

The worst thing is not to be alone.

She likes being alone, on sunny afternoons when Cid brings her home a new book and the other children are all off playing and there is just her and the porch and the crisp newsprint scent of her present.

The worst thing is disappearing.

If he is still thinking about her, she is not gone.

She still exists.

Death is when all your friends and your family stop thinking about you, when they stop caring where you went or if you will ever come back, and when this happens, someone folds you up like a doll into this long wooden box and they put you in the ground, because that is where people go, when no one loves them anymore.

She looks at the princess with hair that goes on forever and the prince who turns into a frog, and she wonders why their stories got to stop at the happy ending, and why hers has to keep going.

Because one day, he will forget her.

**A/N: I promise these interludes will start answering some questions eventually. We're getting there.**


	8. Chapter Four

**A/N: So I really should have posted this probably a week ago, but actually writing the story is just so much more fun than proofreading, ya' know? Oh well. If you guys haven't heard from me in a little while, it just means I'm busy writing, so that's good, right? It'll get posted eventually.**

**Dee- The birthday celebrations I was heading off to were not my own, but I'll take your 'happy birthday' anyway; it's just a little bit early, since my birthday is actually this Tuesday. **

**Tubby- good to see a new face, and, yes, Laguna will be making numerous appearances throughout this fic. I already have one more scene from his perspective completed, and am currently working on another one. I really like him as a character and would have liked to see more of him in the game, and since here in this fic I am God (my obsession with writing may or not indicate a bit of a God complex), he gets more 'screen time'. For those of you who are not big Laguna fans, hopefully I manage to find some way to suck you down into his story.**

**RadiantRedWrath- 'Excuse me while I go and sob in the corner.' I feel like I get this a lot. Do you guys ever feel like you need a hug after reading my stuff?**

**So this fic is already over 85,000 words and nearly 180 pages in its original document. I just started it in November. I may have a sickness. **

**Anyway, there's been a lot of internal struggle and philosophizing lately, and you know what that means- WE BREAK SOME HEADS NOW.**

**Chapter Four**

Timber Station

Timber

She has just barely planted her foot on Timber soil when suddenly she is upended, thrust facedown into the street.

She tastes dirt and blood and sweat, feels the hot hard pressure of someone sprawled out on top of her.

"Fucking _get down_," Seifer snarls when she instinctively pushes against this weight, tries to roll it off her back, and now the sounds of war ring and chatter and rattle all around her.

It is like the cold wet autumn air seeps all the way down through her skin into her veins and for just a moment, everything is flash-frozen: her own heart inside her throat, the triphammer of his in her ears, the thunderstorm resonations of machine gun screams-

The moment shatters.

Shrieking in her ears and the echoic metallic _pinging _of steel ricocheting off steel and now a muffled _thoom_ and she flips her face over onto one cheek and watches the ground just feet beyond her foam up into a column that spreads its tiny black-ink stars of earth through the sky-

She hears more screams, another grenade, firecracker gunfire-

"Seifer-"

He keeps his cheek pressed to the back of her neck and his arms pressed down tight to either side of her head, so close she can shift it only a scant centimeter in either direction, and now more black-ink stars blow themselves into the sky like rain falling the wrong direction, and he flings himself off her. His hand tangles in the collar of her shirt and he lifts her like she is a doll, or a child, one seamless effortless motion-

They go careening back into the side of the train. She feels the shockwave of this collision all the way down her spine and it spasms her, folds her at the waist, and this is all the reaction she has time for, because now he is in front of her, arms spread wide, palms flat against the car beneath her back, and she has no time for the sharp scalpel pain in her spine or the hot acid prickle of her left pinky nail swinging loose from its bed- he is a _target_-

She wraps her fingers around the lapels of his jacket and pulls.

He stumbles forward against her as Protect leaves her so violently her knees become hot liquid underneath her and the spell blows itself open around them and now little angry hornets of bullets _tink tink tink _like raindrops on glass and fall harmlessly away.

Protect dimples, bows trembling inward, does not give.

She holds herself upright on him, locked chest to chest, his arms around her waist, his cheek to her shoulder.

They have both shut their eyes.

His heart pounds so hard it is like it lives inside both of them.

She stays where she is, nose pressed to his chest, hands still fisted in those lapels, and she draws a deep breath, drinks in the smell of Garden's generic laundry detergent, feels him shift his cheek on her shoulder, tighten his arms a little more-

"Are you…are you all right?" she asks into his shirt, testing her legs out beneath her, letting go of his lapels in little cautious increments that gradually ease her back into standing on her own.

He pulls his cheek from her shoulder and looks down into her eyes, and now they are almost forehead to forehead, nose to nose.

His face is so close she can feel his breath across her lips, see the tiny constellations of freckles that spatter his cheeks in arcs beneath his eyes, and for some reason she thinks of the boy and the swing, and how it felt to be stopped midair by those rough white hands, big for his age.

Big for _whose _age, dammit, what's _wrong _with her- why doesn't she _know_-

"You got anymore of those?"

"What?"

"A Protect, Instructor."

She squeezes her eyes shut for just a moment, feeling around down inside herself. "Yes."

"How many?"

"Three."

He smiles. It is the one that is just a little crooked, the one that fractures the skin around his eyes, and wouldn't it be nice, to have another man smile at her like this- _can _that other man even smile like this?

"Then good-bye, Trepe. Nice tits, by the way, but next time you smash them up against me at least take off your bra first," he says, and steps away.

* * *

He doesn't have time to savor this.

He turns away from her and goes striding across the churned-up mud beneath his feet, coat flapping, walking like feeling Protect shimmer and fade and smoke itself out of existence around him does not scare the shit out of him-

He is afraid to die.

He is so _fucking _afraid, sometimes.

He tastes death and he sees it and he smells it all around him so fucking often it's hard not to wonder sometimes what the hell it feels like, what it's like to be the guy whose eyes don't see anymore, whose lungs scrape only fading little gasps of reflexive death moan back into their blood-gargling throat.

What the fuck is it like, to get up in the morning and go to sleep that night in a little fucking box they lower away into the ground, where you will be shit on by rats and eaten by maggots?

But you forget that, walking out here with a dozen little black holes aimed at your chest; you put it behind you. You take a deep breath and pick up your balls and you never let them see.

He snags Hyperion on his way toward the trees, hefting it over his shoulder, listening to spent rounds click and crunch and split apart beneath his boots.

The mud tongues his boots all the way up to his laces.

He keeps walking.

The shadows among the trees dart and break off from one another and flow like oil between the branches, and he keeps walking.

She's got him.

He trusts her.

He fucking _trusts _her, and any _minute _now, if you wouldn't fucking mind, Quistis-

* * *

She casts Protect once, again, triple-layers the spells around him until she has nothing left.

She sags back against the train, slides down its cold rain-slick box to sit breathlessly boneless on the ground.

* * *

He keeps his lips locked open around his teeth.

When they see you smile is when they know it's time to run.

The shadows among the trees open fire.

The blue-shimmering capsule around him flexes beneath a hundred little pockmarks of bullets that ding the surface but do not burrow their way through to him, and he goes on walking, casually, fucking strolling really, blade over his shoulder and that wolf's smile still on his face.

He feels his tags cold against his throat, jingling a little with each step, and in this blue-shimminering capsule everything is magnified, bounced around until he is a thousand little echoes of his beating heart and his harsh metal breath.

He hopes to fucking hell this thing holds out long enough.

The shadows reload.

He brings Hyperion sweeping down and lets these thousand heartbeat echoes pound their way through to his fucking brain until everything else has been blasted away, until he is not scared or cold or wet, until there is just his weapon in his palm and his smile on his lips and his extended free hand, fingers beckoning.

Come and get it, fuckers.

* * *

When he breathes in, it's just a short shallow little thing, and the moment it fills his lungs, expands his ribs just slightly out to either side, he shuts his mouth around it.

His finger caresses the trigger.

That dumb, dumb shit, he thinks, and fires.

* * *

One of the shadows drops before he even reaches it, and Hyne fucking bless that cowboy and his shooting.

He swings.

His gunblade is already halfway through its arc when he realizes the neck it cleaves into with a soggy firewood crack is attached to a kid, some shivering little fourteen-year-old with an empty machine gun in his hand and tears in his eyes-

It's ok, though.

He's killed soldiers even younger than this.

This is on the fucks who recruited him before his balls even dropped; don't think he's got any mercy in his heart just because they shoved some goddamned babies out into this shitstorm.

He puts a boot to the kid's shoulder and kicks him back and now his throat guppies open around Hyperion and Seifer yanks it free of that garish clown smile of a wound and keeps going.

They retreat, stop, fire, retreat again, and he just keeps on fucking coming, notice that?

Run faster, bitches.

* * *

Zell shoots ahead of him.

He slings Lionheart over his shoulder and lowers his head against the rain and he runs.

The ground sucks at his boots and the rain stings in his eyes and he keeps running.

* * *

Something quivers his little capsule around him and he turns disdainfully, Hyperion over his shoulder again, and this skinny little terrorist bitch steps away from the knife she leaves vibrating in Quistis' spell, eyes huge, and fuck-

He really hates killing women.

She's even pretty.

He takes her head off with one whistling axe swing of a strike, watches her blood become little black raindrops on all the nearby trees.

Something arcs through the air and lands at his feet, clinking, and he slides the tip of Hyperion underneath it and flicks it scornfully back the direction it came.

It thumps down somewhere he can't see and he hears the muffled pulse thud of its explosion and someone's hand takes wing into the sky, and he keeps walking.

You don't stop.

You do not ever fucking stop, not if your best goddamned friend is bubbling his dying fucking words at your feet and leaving him behind uncoils the fist in your gut and loosens its frail fucking control over all the vomit you have pressed down flat inside of yourself and you spew as you run, get it all down your pants and your new kid-leather gloves.

He left someone behind before.

He was sixteen.

The someone was his first combat instructor, who told him he had real talent, who wanted a wife and a son but gave all that up to die alone and crying in a puddle of his own piss and shit.

Sometimes he'd like to know if it's really worth it.

You hand your whole life over to Garden, let them take away your past and cut short your future, and sure, look at the sort of shit you get to handle- his personal favorite is the XLM 5 gun turret mounted on one of Garden's all-terrain vehicles- but when the clock winds down and the hourglass dumps its final grains into the bottom and you can only lie still and cold and unseeing beneath the rain, feeling your bowels quiver and seize and splatter themselves empty across the ground beneath you-

Are you really even going to give two insignificant _fucks _that for a few short years some women creamed their panties watching you pump weights and whip a gunblade around faster and smoother and more skillfully than anyone ever has or will? Are you really going to give a _shit _that once upon a time people turned around to walk the other direction just because the barest half-second glimpse of your uniform sent their quaking coward hearts into their throats-

He wonders if all the people he carves into little shivering raw-meat slabs think it's worth it, if their cause was important enough, if they don't want to just go _home_.

That's what Instructor Davon wanted to do, you know.

For years and years and years he gave his sweat and his blood and all the time he never got back to that place; he sent kids away to die and brought them home in bags, and when some fucker sliced him open and pulled his guts out through the new smile in his stomach, he lived just long enough to weep and piss and pray so goddamned hard to just _go home _that's all he _wanted_.

That's probably all he'll want in the end too.

Except he doesn't have a home. Garden is a place to lay his head, to eat his fill, to stay dry in the spring and warm in the winter; there are exactly four people he gives a shit about in that whole festering fucking hole, and all the rest can just go and eat a dick.

Matron's was home.

But she sent him away, she gave him up, and she can just go and eat a fucking dick like all the rest of them, for all he fucking _cares_. _She _didn't, after all.

Matron hated him so much she made a place inside his head for him to crawl away and die, and in the end she hated him even more than that, because she wouldn't _let _him die, because that wasn't the _point_, because she wanted him to live, to fucking _see_.

He sees one of the shadows break from cover, fall, get back up covered in mud and shit and blood, and he steps forward with Hyperion over his shoulder.

If mommy could only see him now.

* * *

They move through the trees like ghosts, perfectly in tandem, darting from trunk to trunk to trunk: they are little flickers of motion among gunpowder smoke and thunderstorm skies, slipping silently away through the branches, brief hints of advancement and nothing else.

She spots Squall ahead of her and she can breathe again: he is whole and unharmed and he moves so _beautifully_, and if she can just forget what he is doing, if she can just not hear the tree-twig crack of ruined vertebrae and snapped-off teeth and fractured fingers that shudder and spasm and drag themselves inch by painful inch through the mud, she can piece these spins and pivots and twirls into something else, sew them all together into another image, a different memory.

This is a dance, and in his hand is not his weapon but her own palm, small and pale and smooth inside his own.

She runs harders.

She is inside the bubble now, this place where there is no more sky or ground or cold fingers of wind inside her lungs.

There is only blood and hot metal adrenaline in her mouth and the bright white inferno of her spell stock boiling over into her veins and from out behind the trees she watches him stride, still wrapped in her spells, Hyperion over his shoulder-

"Take one of them alive!" she screams, uncoiling her whip.

* * *

He counts.

One.

Two.

Three four five six-

If they are only numbers inside his head, he does not feel.

He pivots, slashes, yanks Lionheart free from where it hangs up in a notch of pelvic bone.

Seven eight.

Nine.

They are only numbers, and he does not feel.

* * *

Wuss is a good man, if you can forgive him the hair.

Which, admittedly, is a fucking lot to forgive. But say what you want about the pointy-headed asshole, at least he's got your back, and he is fucking _fast_: he one-two's the man to Seifer's left before the guy can even swing the barrel of his gun around to aim, and now as he pitches bleeding backward, a neatly-chambered front kick snaps something in the guy's throat and finishes him off for good.

_Take one of them alive_, Trepe yelled from somewhere behind him, but fuck, he's not seeing a whole lot of options left here; maybe she should have said something earlier. Yeah, yeah, standard procedure, but the fuckers were _shooting _at him, and goddamned pardon him for not stopping to string one of them up by their toes until he can swing back by to pick them up.

Zell sprints away into the trees, and behind him there is suddenly the resounding gunshot crack of a foot coming down wrong, and he spins, gunblade extended, the first layer of the spells enclosing him flickering and fading and snapping finally off.

Another kid. Seventeen, probably.

Cap of sweat-plastered brown hair and shaking hands and his gun at his feet, and now those hands go up, still trembling, and he laces them together behind his head and sinks shivering down to both knees, and doesn't this kid _know _what SeeDs do to enemy combantants they don't kill?

"Pplease- I'm out, ok, I'm- I'm out of ammo and I _surrender_, ok, _please_-"

He thinks this is some kind of game, and now he doesn't want to play anymore. He's come out of his hiding place and given himself up and now it's back to mom's for milk and cookies and maybe a little vanilla porn he will jerk himself off to until he bursts across his hand with a little satisfied grunt, and then he will roll over and drift away to sleep and he will dream about big tits and short skirts and the chick in his homeroom class who never gives him the time of day, who is all his when the black rolls in like a tide to smother his consciousness.

"Please, sir-"

The kid'll squeal like a pig. He might try to be brave for a little while, cling to whatever shitty little illusion he had when he first joined up with these Timber Owls, and then Squall will knock out his front teeth with the handle of Lionheart and he will stomp down on the kid's kneecap until a liquid crunch tells him something very fucking bad has just happened and he will scream, and crap himself, and beg for his mother, and he will tell them everything.

"_Please_."

Hyperion slithers down off his shoulder, and the kid lowers his eyes and starts to cry and now his pleas come out all slurred, mushy, and something tightens inside his chest and shoots itself all the way down into his hands and he watches his fingers twitch one by one by one against the handle, and somewhere behind him, Quistis calls out again-

"Seifer, don't-"

He stabs his blade all the way through the kid's slick-saliva mouth until it comes out the other side. Its tip scores the bark on the tree behind his head, and the guy just goes loose, unstrung, flops himself down on that blade like a fish finding dry stream bed at the end of its leap.

It's the nicest thing he's done all week.

* * *

Squall is a good little Garden butt pirate, and he brought one back.

This one is quieter, and he doesn't beg and he doesn't bargain and Seifer's not sure they're getting shit out of him.

Six Galbadian soldiers arrive after everything is already done and over with, and Quistis instructs them to cordon off the station and inform the conductors that they are done running trains for the day.

They take him into the private SeeD compartment and sit him down on the couch, and before Leonhart's even thrown his first punch the cowboy slips quietly away out into the hallway.

They watched a thousand different videos of wartime atrocities all through their first couple of years at Garden and he still never could stomach this kind of shit. Garden made them all sit through the graphic rapes and beheadings and child soldier gangbangs meant to desensitize them, and that fucker used to just lounge in the back of the classroom like it was no never fucking mind to him, hat pulled low on his brow, little come-and-get-me-ladies smirk on his face.

He wonders if the instructors ever figured out that he never watched them at all, that just listening to them was almost too much, that that hat wasn't a fashion statement but a shield to hide the tears Seifer spotted later in the hallway outside. He wiped his face and moved on down the hall to his next class, picked up his gun and blasted bulls-eyes through the centers of all his targets faster than anyone else ever had before and they never talked about it, and Seifer should have picked on the fucker, should have torn him down and made him understand that what he'd just done was not crying at all, he'd show him crying, he'd fucking _give _him something to really bawl about, but what happened instead was they found themselves at the same cafeteria table, and then later together in the training room, and then sitting across from one another in the library sharing snickers and glimpses of porn stashed away between the pages of their SeeD manuals, and for the first time he could ever remember he had a _friend_, a real fucking _friend_ who cared if he did not come back.

Quistis stopped caring shortly after she came to Garden but Irvine Kinneas remembered, and he gave a shit, and the first day Seifer stepped through Galbadia's doors he gave him this short nod and little subtle salute behind the headmaster's back and it fucking _choked _him that someone had held on, that someone had not let him go.

Everyone else had let him go, cut him loose, but Irvine Kinneas held on, and when he spotted those still-drying tears on the cowboy's face after class he kept his mouth fucking shut and he cold-cocked the first asshole who dared comment on them.

"Name?" Quistis asks crisply, crossing both arms over her chest and tapping one booted toe lightly against the floor, whip coiled neatly at her hip, and he thinks about how fucking beautiful she looks in this light, this soft aureole that haloes out around her and leaks itself down her arms to drip off her elbows, like she is fucking bleeding the stuff. He knows by the thin tight line of her mouth that she hates this too, that she wants there to be another way, that doing her duty is goddamned killing her right now but she can't and she won't and she doesn't know how to do anything else.

He steps up behind her.

He hopes, sometimes, when he is being a glass half-full asshole, that just being next to her, just standing here close enough to touch is enough to keep her going, drive her forward, because it's enough for _him_; she doesn't know that, but it fucking is.

His favorite instructor who wanted a wife and a son and died crying couldn't save him from his first SeeD exam, when a rival mercenary group stripped him naked and did things to him he can still only recall in little bits and flashes of pieces, and Seifer sure as shit couldn't save himself, because what he does clearly remember is wanting to die, is giving up with his face in the mud and his blood-smeared nose bubbling little wheezing breaths that stretched out longer and longer and longer, until they gave him up for dead and went away laughing.

He dragged himself back to the pick-up point by his fingernails.

They airlifted him to a hospital in Deling City because even Garden didn't have the kind of facilities for all the shit he had gone through, and it took him two days to figure out why he was still here, why he was breathing inside a little plastic contraption that smoked white with each exhale he released.

He'd kind of always known he'd loved her, since he was ten, when he saw her on that porch with the sun in her hair and a book in her hands, but it was this moment, this one long, long fucking moment of white-fogged plastic and softly beeping machines that did all his breathing for him that he fucking understood, really _got it_: he'd dragged himself back to that pick-up point by his fingernails because he wanted to see her again, because he wasn't done trying to make her remember him, and four months later when she looked over at Squall for the first time with that little smile on her lips and shy duck of her head, he sagged down in his seat like he had just been nut-punched, and everything they had done to him, everything he had just lived through had not hurt that goddamned much.

"Name," Quistis repeats, tapping her toe again.

The man says nothing.

He's not much older than the kid Seifer saved from this same fate, early twenties, probably, bland-looking, nothing real special, but he's got a little steel in his eyes, and he's got to fucking know what's coming, and still he says nothing.

Squall hits him.

It's a good blow, angled just right, calculated just so, no wasted effort, no misspent energy, and it snaps the guy's head back and geysers little red raindrops into the air, and now the guy leans forward and spits something sticky onto the floor beside Squall's left boot, and still he says nothing.

"How do you plan to kidnap President Deling? Where is the rendezvous point?"

Zell rocks nervously back on his heels in the corner, rubbing the nape of his neck uncomfortably. He doesn't see Selphie anywhere, but he'll put good money on her having slipped out with the cowboy while he wasn't paying attention, which is good, because you know anything that cute takes it good and hard and fast in the ass. Take his mind off what's going on in here, at least.

Seifer cracks his knuckles.

Squall chambers for a right cross, plows it right into their prisoner's jaw, and something gives way with a soft little pop and the guy hunches forward on the couch, slides limply over its edge onto the floor-

Seifer kicks him so hard in the side he is lifted a good three inches off the floor; the guy thuds back down with a muted little moan, and now he pulls his foot back and subtly shakes it out behind him, because _godammit, _he forgot to curl his toes back and one of the fuckers hurts like a bitch now. Probably broke it, knowing his luck.

Squall seizes the guy's left hand roughly in his own. "Talk."

Another wet clot-smack of saliva dripping softly onto the floor beside that mirror-shining boot, and give the guy credit for having a pair, because he keeps his mouth shut and his eyes open, and he takes the next blow like a man.

Leonhart jerks the man's left pointer finger back until it splinters loudly, until it thrusts the little white tongue of its fracture through the red-ribboned skin that tears apart around it, and now Quistis looks away, for just a moment.

"Tell us _something_." There is a little hint of a plea in her voice, if you know how to listen for it.

Seifer stomps the guy's right hand, grinds his heel down into the knuckles until he feels something give.

His hands are trembling, the stupid fuckers; maybe he's getting old; maybe its early-onset arthritis, because this does not fucking shake him up-

"Nothing?" he asks, squatting down next to the guy's face where it is pressed cheek-down into the carpet, draping both hands over his thighs.

"No," their prisoner says, and that's where all the fear is, not shining in his eyes or twitching in his hands but wrapped up tight inside that one little syllable, that one fractured little word, broken apart and spit up in pieces.

Give them _something_, for shit's sake; doesn't this asshole _understand _what they have to do to him?

He gets it.

Seifer can see that in his eyes.

He gets it and he is still going to hold on, he is still going to fight and protect and _believe_.

He kept his mouth shut once when he was afraid to, when keeping everything sealed away inside almost fucking killed him, but he had a cause too, see, and he knows all about holding on, how goddamned exhausting it is, how fucking _disappointing_, how utterly fucking worth it.

You believe in something, you hold it tight and you do not let it go, or you might as well roll over and die, because you don't have shit.

It's going to be a long fucking afternoon.

* * *

He props his rifle against the corridor wall and leans his hands down on the windowsill, hat slipping down onto the bridge of his nose.

Breathe in, out, count down from ten-

Do not _think_, Hyne-dammit; you don't hear anything, you understand; you don't _know_; you do not _care_-

But the problem has always been that he knows what goes on behind closed doors, and he _does _care; it chews him down into little rat-gnawed pieces, this caring, it eats away and away and away at him until there is nothing left, until he is the brittle scarecrow man called Irvine Kinneas, who smiles pretty and walks tough and wipes tears from his eyes in between shots.

It's one thing to kill a man in battle, when it's him or you, when it's murder or be murdered yourself.

It's another thing entirely to draw it out, to beat words from fat-swollen slugs of lips, to hammer and flail and chip away at a man until there is nothing left of him.

He breathes. He holds the air in his lungs, rolls it around in his mouth, takes his time savoring it until he huffs it quietly back out again, and now he watches this air paint the window white, steam itself silently away back into the glass-

"Hi!"

Hyne-damn holy shit _hell_ he didn't even hear her come up behind him-

He spins.

She bounces on her toes, tips her head slightly to one side, and her smile squeezes him, compresses his heart down to sludge and pours it into his gut.

He held onto this smile. He held onto it through basic training and his first exam, through his first kill and the first friend he ever lost; he gripped it so Hyne-damned tight it hurt his chest to cling that hard, but he kept _doing _it; he never gave up; he always knew he would see her again, and one day he looked out over a ballroom and there she was, smiling at him, and he went up to her with his heart in his throat and she held out her hand to him and introduced herself like a stranger, and it still hurts even now.

Wasn't like he didn't expect it; everyone forgets, pretty much, 'cept him and Almasy, course. But he still…he still thought that maybe it would be _different _with him; maybe she forgot all the rest of them, maybe she skipped right on by Squall like she never even knew him, but not the boy who brought her flowers from the woods and cookies from the cupboard she could never reach; not _him_, Selph, not this boy who held her hand when she was scared, who pointed out the patterns in the stars and told her about the people who lived inside them.

"You ok?" she asks, folding her hands in front of her bright yellow skirt. "You kinda' look a little green. Does your stomach hurt?" She lowers her voice. "Is it about…what they're doing in there?"

"Nah; I ain't squeamish, darlin'." He turns to face her, lounges back against the sill with both his elbows propped up against it, hat low. This'll be fine; he can pull this off no problem, if only she can't hear his Hyne-damned _heart_. "Just not my thing. Gotta' keep my hands limber, you know," he drawls. He lets her do what she will with the innuendo in his voice.

"Oh. I thought maybe it bothered you or something." She bounces up to stand beside him and presses her nose against the window, watching her short sharp exhales smear ghosts across the glass. "It's kinda' yucky, don't you think? I mean, the poor guy."

"He's the enemy."

"Yeah, but he's just doing what he's supposed to, right? Just like we are? How'd _you'd _like someone to beat you up just for being loyal to Garden, huh, mister?" She pokes him in the side, not taking her nose from the glass, and he jumps just slightly, twitches himself back away from her prodding finger. "I mean, to him, _we're _the bad guys, right?" She frowns and pulls away from the window, wiping her hand across the smear she's left behind. "We're the bad guys to a lot of people. But that doesn't _mean _we're bad. I'm too cute to be bad, right?" she asks sunnily, and a tilt of her head and a smile and one of his elbows slips on the sill and he fumbles to regain his carefully casual slouch, flicking one hand up to nudge his hat down just a little lower.

"I ain't gonna' argue with that one, sweetheart."

"So?"

He scratches the underside of his jaw and frowns. "So, what?"

"So is that why you're out here, because you know all that, because he's kinda' just like us, just someone doing their job, and maybe he doesn't like it either? You're not like the blonde meanie, right? You don't like hurting people?"

"Seifer doesn't like hurting people."

"Really?" she scrunches up her nose.

"Well, he ain't exactly _opposed _to it, but he's not as mean as he wants everyone to think he is."

"Like with Quisty," she says, smiling and pushing her nose back into the window, blowing and wiping and repeating the process all over again, swirling her fingers through little abstract patterns that carve themselves into the vapor she leaves behind. "He gets really smiley when he looks at her."

He watches her paint another picture onto the glass.

"Soooo." She furrows her eyebrows together and tucks her tongue into one corner of her mouth, adds a careful dot to her creation and a little swoop of a 'c', then spins sideways to face him. "How come you joined SeeD?"

He shifts his elbows a little, works his arid lizard tongue inside his parched desert mouth.

"You're not really _really _happy to be here, are you?"

"What do you mean?"

"When you shoot, you look sad." She clasps her hands together in front of her again, and he remembers the exact shape they made against his own in the dark, and Selph sweetheart, don't _do _this, don't pick away at him when he is already still raw. They are strangers now; he is a man she doesn't know and she is a woman he never forgot, and there is nothing left for them to talk about anymore; he doesn't _want _to talk- he wants to hold her up against him until she remembers a boy with gaps between his teeth and cherry popsicle on his lips, who brought her presents and helped her down from trees that were too high. For sixteen years he loved her and she forgot him and what else is there to _say_?

"You know what I do when I'm sad?" she asks, jutting her head forward far enough into his peripheral vision that he can't help but look at her. "Hmm?" She tilts her head and smiles prettily and there is no stopping this softening inside of him, this…_dissolving_, and why why _why _the Hyne-damned hell can't he just _forget _about this woman-

"What?" he asks helplessly.

"I smile! Real big, like this, see?" She demonstrates, pulls her lips out as wide as they will go, fits as many teeth as she can into this grin that is just a little frightening.

What gets him is just how much she hasn't changed. He remembers-

He doesn't want to remember anymore. Remembering has only ever ripped him open across the heart and pulled out everything that is inside of him and he doesn't _want to feel _anymore.

Garden taught him long ago about compartmentalizing, packing away all the things you do not need to live, about wrapping theses things tight and dropping them down into dust and cobwebs; you let them gather mildew in an unused corner of your mind and you do not touch them, ever, and you go on, you survive. Thrive. Watch your rank go up and your conscience go down, and you keep on doing this until you do not even remember what it was you dropped off to gather mildew in some unused nook you haven't seen in years.

Course, he's always been real Hyne-damned awful at this. He's never seen his file personally, but once after his second mission that Hyne-awful intercom screeched his name down the polished halls and he slipped quietly away to Headmaster Martine's office, tipping his hat to everyone he passed and smiling and leaving his thumbs hooked casually through the loops of his pants so no one would see the way the things jerked and spasmed and leaked sweat rolling down his fingers, and he sat himself just as casually down across from the boss man and listened to all of his weaknesses be rattled off to him from a piece of paper sandwiched between cream-colored cardboard.

_Sensitive_. That was the one Headmaster Martine hit hard and drew out, and if Irvine had jumped up onto his desk and dropped a steamer right in the middle of the man's lunch he could not have looked more disgusted.

They didn't dismiss him, a course; couldn't do that, not when he was the best shot any of them had ever seen in decades, maybe ever.

They just tried to beat it out of him.

They sent him along to accompany one of the worst SeeD exams in Garden's history, and for three long, long days he provided sniper support against a group of Estharian rebels the Galbadian army had tracked into Trabia's mountains and he watched ten prospective SeeDs curl their black-blistered fingers into the rock and snow and sludge beneath them and just stop moving.

The stillness is always the worst part of an exam. You keep talking, you hope your voice will call them back, keep them anchored, and then they stop twitching and they go so _quiet_, and you reach carefully down to shut their eyes and you keep your hand pressed to their face for so long, swallowing and blinking and _wondering_.

He has always wondered.

Garden has tried to beat this out of him too, but he will always gently shut their eyes and wonder where they have gone and if it's any better than what they left behind, and he will _hope_, Hyne-dammit.

They can't take that away from him.

One day someone will shut his eyes and he will never open them again and he'd like to believe- he is _going _to believe- that there is a place for people like him, who lived hard and fast and brief, who said good-bye too many times, who wanted and dreamed and had no place else to go.

"Try it!" she says, reaching for his face.

He lets her fingers arrange his lips, lets them dimple the corners of his mouth, and they're so _soft_; you'd think a woman like her, her kinda' work- you'd think she'd have all these hard little calluses, tiny scar-rough lumps beneath skin, but no, _no_-

He's trapped his breath inside his chest so hard it hurts.

He stretches his hands slowly up to cover hers, and now the artificial sun-bright smile on her face falters, slips a little-

"Selphie-"

She yanks her fingers away, takes a startled _clop _of a step backward, eyes wide.

"Umm…I gotta' go. Quisty wanted me to check something with the soldiers, ok? See you later, Irvine!"

She pirouettes on a heel and lifts one hand to wave, skips away down the hall like nothing about this has effected her, like she has barely even noticed any of it, and he folds backward against the window sill with a sigh and drops his chin down onto his chest.

* * *

Oooh, wowee!

_Weird_.

When he touched her like that, bent his face so close his nose almost grazed the tip of her own-

She saw something.

It was…umm…hmm. Well, she's not sure exactly _what _it was, but it looked like a little house or something, away in the distance, and she heard the _ocean_, the cries of gulls and the screams of children, and she used this new shampoo the other day and maybe it did something to her; maybe the chemicals fried some of her brain parts or something like that, don'tcha think that was probably it?

She stops at the end of the hall and looks back over her shoulder, and now he glances up from underneath his hat and something goes all the way through her down to the very tippy tips of her toes, and she flashes her best smile and flickers her hand in a little parting wave and skips on away down the corridor.

* * *

"He's not giving us shit." He stands and smears the blood from his fingers down the sides of his pants.

The guy never even screamed.

Quistis slips her back-up pistol from its holster and hands it silently to Squall, who hefts it in his hand and thumbs the safety and pulls the guy to his knees by the collar of his shirt, and he wants to turn away, he really fucking does, but this is hardly the first goddamned time he's ever watched someone become something, this transition from man to meat.

He watched this happen to his favorite instructor.

Took a lot longer than this, of course, and some parts are still a little hazy around the edges, because there are some things you're just better off not knowing at all, but he remembers that moment even if he doesn't remember a lot of others.

The guy was looking at him, and then suddenly he wasn't. It was that fucking fast; just a flicker of a moment, an eyeblink, and then he was alone, he was left all by himself on a hard frost-layered ground with blood in his throat and acid warmth in his eyes and now there was nothing else for them to play with, but he was only fucking _sixteen- _he was _sixteen please_-

He held on and he took everything they did to him without a sound because that was what his instructor had done, that pile of meat who used to be a man called Vince Davon.

He folds his arms across his chest and waits.

Squall raises the gun.

* * *

You live your life not knowing.

From moment to moment, from breath to breath, you are never sure. Which one is your last? How many do you have left?

You get up in the morning and you do not know, and this is how you go about your day, never thinking, never wondering, and until you learn differently you will always think time is something elastic, that it can be stretched and stretched and stretched, that it will _hold_, keep going, that it will never bend or break or run out. You have so much of it you can spill its grains between your fingers like sand.

You live your life not knowing until suddenly one day you do.

This moment is _the _moment. This breath is _the _breath.

You girlfriend who was going to become your fiance tonight over dinner will sit up all night wondering; she will take her breaths and spill her moments messily between her fingers and she will keep doing this, believing in time and its flexibility and the way the two of you have all of it you could ever want, and then a knock on her door will rouse her from her shallow nap on the couch and she will understand.

They will say, "I'm sorry", tell her with bowed heads and wet eyes, "He didn't make it", and she will understand about the moments, and the way they flick and hurry and scurry by, until there is nowhere else for them to go, until you are all out, and sometimes these moments just go by faster for some people than they do for others.

You breathe.

One, two, three-

You do not blink.

You did not tell them anything.

Your name is Watts Keeling and you have a mother who loves you and a girlfriend who has patiently waited to be made your wife and all of this you kept sealed away inside yourself, taped carefully down along the edges where they could not see.

You fought for a cause.

You did not die in vain.

You are not ready you will _never _be ready you were supposed to have a _life_ you're not _done yet-_

But time does not care and it does not yield just because you did not cry and you did not speak, and today the clock stops and the last insignificant molecules of time slip themselves between your fingers and you breathe in so _hard_, freeze this last moment away inside your chest-

* * *

The guy folds slowly forward, lands facedown against the blood-stained carpet.

Squall lowers his hand.

He stares at the pistol for a long moment, and for just a second, Seifer thinks that maybe there is something inside the guy after all; maybe he is not just a bunch of fucking cogs and pistons and pulleys, jerking him stiffly through all his daily routines.

His hands are shaking again.

He turns them into fists at his sides and spins abruptly on his heel, calling out something over his shoulder about checking on the cowboy. He's not even exactly sure what it is that comes out of his mouth, he just needs to fucking get _out _of here-

The hallway is full of air that does not smell like blood or shit or piss, and he sucks it down deep, holds onto it tight.

"Are you all right?"

He pastes a smile onto his face and pops his knuckles, his neck.

You never let them see the cracks.

"I know you don't like what we had to do in there-"

"Tch; are you kidding? I just needed to be alone with my hand for a few minutes. That kind of shit just turns me on."

She lifts an eyebrow and tilts her chin just slightly up and a contemplative squint of her eyes and he gets the uncomfortable feeling that she sees all the cracks and fault lines and imperfections that piece him together beneath the surface, and this shit ends fucking _now_, because she does not have the right to look at him this way.

How long has _he _looked at her this way; how long has he tried to fucking _tell _her; _how goddamned long has he _hoped_-_

She crosses both arms over her chest and cocks a hip out to one side, and he remembers a smaller version of her standing just exactly this way, hair shimmering down over one shoulder, so much fucking _innocence _in her eyes.

This Quistis has eyes like little chips of ice, full of all the things she has seen. Not quite twenty-two and fucking ancient, but, shit, aren't they all old before their time?

At fourteen he had his first attempted murder under his belt and by fifteen he'd sealed the deal for good, no more 'attempt' about it, just him and a blade and the new kid hunched over on the mat at his feet, his raw-hamburger side spreading this little red oil slick beneath Seifer's boots.

It was ok, though.

Training accident, y'see. Happens all the time.

They cleaned up the blood and sent him off to his next class and he never knew what happened after that, how they told the kid's family, what his mother did when she found out.

Sometimes in his dreams he is the kid on that mat and there is no one to tell, no one who cares, and he wakes up cold and sweating and breathing harsh little machine gun rattles of exhales that don't even twitch Wuss from his figure-eight bedcovers.

"You're not a good liar," she points out calmly.

"I came to check on Irvine," he snaps. "Not that I give a shit about him either, but if he spews somewhere I'll probably step in it. I'd like a goddamned heads-up, at least."

"All right." She turns back toward the door, back straight, head high, and he can't remember a time when she didn't stand like that, perfectly aligned from head to toe, that perky little goddamned nose in the air.

"You had three Protects stocked, didn't you?" he says abruptly.

She stops and glances back over one shoulder. "Yes. Why?"

"Why'd you use all three of them on me?"

She spins all the way around now, mouth open, hands tightly folded along her sides, and she is so fucking _rigid _he wants to slam her back into that door and show her what it's like to let loose just a little, yield a little fucking control, work the stick from your asshole.

He leans his hip back into the corridor wall and looks her up and down, and he lets the little smirk on his lips spread all the way out, as far as it will go, until her face lights up right along the pretty little lines of her cheekbones.

"I didn't."

"You're not a good liar," he mimics, sing-songing the words, and now his smirk burrows just a little deeper and those pretty little cheekbones flush even harder, and goddamn, how fucking _fun _is it to push her buttons.

"I _didn't_," she snaps, coiling those hands along her sides even tighter. "I gave you one-"

"They don't wear off all at the same time, Trepe. There were three of them."

"Maybe someone else-"

"Someone else cast the exact same spell you cast, at the exact same time?" He furrows his eyebrows and pretends to think about this. "Weird. Maybe you had that whole 'psychopathic powers' thing going on. Or maybe someone _else _in the group does. Maybe they can _read your mind_, Quistis. You know, you should be careful with that sort of shit. I read once that 'psychopathic powers' can see all sorts of things, but mostly they're used for evil, like finding out what color of panties you're wearing. I'm betting it's black. It used to be, you know."

"I figured they'd be best used on you, since you are rather well-known for doing astronomically stupid things," she replies coldly. There is a half-second pause, just long enough for his last words to register in her mind, and now suddenly it is like someone has suctioned away all the color in her cheeks, drained her dry. "'It used to be'? What the _hell _is that supposed to mean?"

He gives himself a slight push off the wall.

He backs her into the door to the private SeeD cabin, stretches his long lean arms up to trap her where she is, his hands pressed down tight to either side of her face, and now something in the pit of his stomach turns over, hollows itself out, and the way she fucking _shrinks _into herself as he pushes himself forward into her-

You better fucking _believe _she needs to shrink, to be afraid; he is not goddamned Squall Leonhart, who wouldn't know what to do with her if she circled her vagina in red marker and pulled his limp little cock out of his pants for him.

She never stays scared for long; it's the thing he likes most about her. This invasion of her precious little bubble paints more red into her cheeks and brings one hand slicing upward to pin the collar of his jacket between her fingers, and a nimble twist and a jerk and now they are nose to nose, his throat only halfway open. "Move your hands," she orders.

"Or what?"

"Or I'll break something. I'll let you pick what."

He grins and pulls one of his hands down to slip it over hers, and _fuck _this woman turns him on when she gets bossy.

"You know why you're mad?"

"Because I find you highly irritating and you are invading my personal space. Move."

"No. You're not mad at _me_. You're mad because you used all three of those Protects on me, because you didn't want to watch me get my ass shot off. I don't blame you; it's a really nice ass. You could bounce a piece of gil off it."

"I shouldn't have used _any _of them on you," she snaps, twisting his collar a little harder.

"Twist a little more, Trepe; I like some pain."

"'Some' isn't what I had in mind."

He found this spot on her neck once, a long time ago; doesn't take much, just a little huff of an exhale, a hint of lips and teeth, and suddenly she shoves him back so hard he hits the wall opposite the door, and now there is this _look _in her eyes that freezes him half-slumped against the wall, breathing hard, and it's about fucking _time _something short-circuited her perpetual fucking hard-on for Puberty Boy.

"What are you doing?" she demands, but there's no anger in this question and all the hot fever rage has drained itself from her cheeks, and now she can only stand here staring at him, eyes huge.

There is a dead guy behind that door at her back. This dead guy probably had a family, maybe a kid, maybe a wife, and because he had a reason to get up in the morning, because he had something he _believed _in, Squall smashed his jaw out of alignment and Seifer smeared his hand in raw red streaks across the carpet and took out both the guy's knees with little liquid pops that still make him wince, to remember them, and when he still held on, when he refused to let go, he took a bullet through the teeth and fell over one last time to lie silently staring into carpet that used to be blue.

He will never complain about the way cold mornings make his aching old joints creak; he will never peacefully close his eyes one last time on a life he lived all the way through to the end, and now his maybe kid and his maybe wife will have to figure out how to go on without him, will always wonder how it could have been, what he might have done.

You wall off so many paths, when you take a life.

But they are still _alive _and it's time to start _feeling _like it; it's time to fucking _savor _it a little-

He wants to fuck her up against the wall where anyone can see, where he will be so lost in her that he won't give a shit; he wants everything to just goddamned _stop_, the whole fucking world, those kid's watchful fucking eyes still staring up at him from that sweaty blue training mat, like he can do something about it _now_, like an "I'm sorry" or an "I fucked up" is going to _change _anything-

"Liked that, didn't you?" he asks roughly. "Think _Pubes _could make you feel like that?"

She turns bright red. "I- you shouldn't have- what did you-"

He pulls himself slowly upright, straightens out all the kinks in his spine until he towers over her once more.

She pivots crisply on one heel and marches briskly away down the hall, and fucking look at _that_- Quistis Trepe walking away without getting in the last word.

He must have flustered the shit out of her.

She has never walked away from Pubes with that look on her face.

* * *

"Uh…you ok?"

He stands looking down at the back of the man's raw-meat head, all the loops and whorls and intricate knots of brain that spill themselves sloppily down the back of his neck onto his red-painted collar, and he says nothing.

He's never killed a man like this before. In battle, there are no decisions, no second-guessing: you thrust and you parry and you spin to block the next, cut him down and keep moving, and you do not stop to _think_, because thinking is a weakness; thinking gets you killed; thinking is not _reaction_.

Something instinctive flicks itself on inside your brain and your muscles respond, whip themselves forward or fling themselves back, stop, go, duck, _sprint_; you breathe, block, attack, defend, until you are all streamlined movement, one single chain of motions linked one to another to another, no breaks or bends or flaws.

He…he had time to think, before he pulled the trigger.

What is it even _like_, to see it coming?

Is anyone going to miss this man? When the soldiers outside the train dispose of him, will someone come forward as soon as it's safe, to give him his last rites, to pack him lovingly away inside his silk-lined bed, lower him down into the mud, leave their tears and their flowers and their carefully-penned farewell letters scattered in pieces across his grave?

"Uh, Squall?" Zell scratches the back of his neck and frowns, hops from one foot to the other, hooks his tightly-clenched right fist into the air, follows this up with a short left jab.

He saw a funeral once, years ago during a training mission just outside Balamb. Small casket; even smaller funeral procession, just a weeping man and woman, holding onto each other in the rain. Lost their five-year-old son, someone murmured grimly as they swept by, picking their way slowly in the ankle-deep mud.

He didn't get to look for long, but what he saw were all these paper notes like snowfall across the gravesite, neatly-folded, carefully pressed down along the corners, and on his way back to the transport later that night, he took one of them, slipped it stealthily down inside his pocket without even breaking his stride, and it wasn't until long after he made it back to Garden that he fished it free, fifteen minutes before lights out.

_Dear Kain,_

_ Mommy said you had to go away and that it wasn't anyone's fault, that it was just time for Hyne to have you back, but she's been crying a lot since you left. How come she's so sad, if it was time? When do you think it's going to be time for me? I'm scared of him coming to get me._

_ I hope he's nice to you. I hope it didn't hurt. _

_ I don't know when it's gonna be time for me to come, but will you wait for me? I'm scared to do it by myself. _

_ Love,_

_ Shaney_

He still has the note. He keeps it in the very bottom drawer of his dresser, all the way at the back, behind piles of starched white shirts and perfectly-pleated uniform pants.

He used to wonder about this moment, this taking away. Garden had never told them anything about it, about this 'Hyne' who came down one day to get you, who made you go whether you wanted to or not.

You would think Galbadian History 201 would have covered something like that.

He stopped wondering the first time he saw someone die.

The kid got just a moment, three half-second flicks of the eyes, and then everything just…stopped, exactly the way Garden had told him it would, exactly the way all the pictures in his textbooks showed him. He closed his eyes and leaked his shit all over the sweat-sticky training mat underneath him, and a minute later Instructor Jant arrived with his long black bag and briskly ordered Seifer Almasy to wait outside in the hall for him to finish, and the kid just kept _laying _there.

Garden released his body to his grieving parents and threw down enough gil to cover a basic funeral without frills, and Seifer Almasy got to stay and this kid had to go, and no one showed up to take him away except his weeping mother and his tight-lipped father.

Seifer didn't yet know what he was doing and someone died on the end of his sword, and Hyne didn't care that the boy was only fourteen and he didn't give a shit that the boy who killed him only got three weeks of kitchen duty for so astronomically fucking up his passe arriere.

The thing is, he's not trained to wonder.

It doesn't matter if this man has someone waiting for him. It does not _matter _if he will get a real grave with a headstone and flowers laid faithfully across its mound every week or a leaf-molded ditch in the woods.

He gets paid either way.

"What are we gonna' do with him?"

He toes the man's flaccid dead-meat hand, listens to it splash softly back down in the puddle of blood beneath his face.

"Go let the soldiers patrolling the station know. They'll take care of it."

His job here is done.


	9. Interlude Four

**A/N: So thus far it seems like the changes I've made have gone over pretty well, and I just want to take this moment to thank everyone for not coming after me with pitchforks, for getting ahold of this beloved old game, pulling it into pieces, and putting it all back together wrong. Longer author's note addressing individual reviewers and whatnot to follow in the next chapter, but for this short little piece, I just wanted to thank you guys as always for reading, for commenting, for giving a crap.**

He asked Matron yesterday if she thought any of the kids would come back to visit him.

She took a really long time to answer, and he _knows _that's a bad sign, but it's his _birthday _today.

He was just…he was just hoping, you know?

But the windows go all dark and the clock on the kitchen wall clicks through breakfast past lunch to dinner and nobody comes to the door except Cid, back from the grocery store, and it doesn't _matter_; they were all _stupid _anyway.

Matron baked him a big cake and piled shiny presents all across the center of the kitchen table and they're all _his _and the cake is all _his _and he didn't want to _share _anyway, so who _cares _that they didn't show up; who cares that they're all too busy with their stupid, _perfect _new lives to remember him; well, he barely even remembers _them_, so _there_.

There are no dark things swimming around in Matron's eyes today and she looks at him in that really soft way she has sometimes, like she knows that just a little too much pressing with her eyes will poke holes in you, cause you're all weird-feeling inside, kinda' hollow, like when you're really hungry, except he just had a big dinner (hamburger and mashed potatoes, his favorite) and he's been hungry lots of times before (Matron said it's cause he just won't stop growing) and it never made his eyes feel like this. They're all hot, and there's this sort of burning, but it's not because he's about to _cry _or something; crying's for _babies _like Zell, and he never does it, he _doesn't_.

He shovels cake into his mouth so fast and hard and unthinking that he doesn't even taste it, not the little whipped cream 's' of his name or the thin strip of fudge sandwiched between layers of frothy white, and Matron warns him to slow down, be careful, but being careful is _stupid _too, and he doesn't wanna'.

She wants to see him smile, so he does, so big it hurts his cheeks, and he keeps this smile stuck on his lips as he rips open all his presents and shoves his dishes out of the way so he can play with his new toys right here on the table, and Matron lets him even though he's not allowed usually, and Cid doesn't say anything either, but he can feel them both looking at him, and he doesn't _like _it; they shouldn't feel _sorry _for him- this is what he _wanted_-

He doesn't have to wrestle Zell for the toys or fight Selphie off the cake, and bossy Quisty won't lecture him about how he's unwrapping his presents all wrong, here, let her do it, and Irvine won't tattle on him for looking up the girls' skirts-

He _likes _having all the cake and the presents and the attention to himself, don't they _understand_?

He races his cars side by side across the table, and this weird hungry feeling inside him tunnels lower, like a worm, and this isn't the _same _without Zell's fingers to run over or Quisty's books to use as ramps.

He flips the cars off the table at exactly the same moment and watches them spin end over end toward the carpet, and when they thud softly against the floor between Cid's feet, he just keeps sitting in his chair.

"Would you like a story, Seifer?" she asks him brightly, but he's not a dumb _kid_, Matron.

She's just trying to make him feel better. She just doesn't want another crybaby Zell. She just wants him to sit here like a good little boy and play quietly and not be loud, isn't that what she told him before _-be quiet boy_- isn't that what she told Cid- _make him be _quiet-

"I don't feel very well," he mumbles, and he leaves his toys on the floor and he walks carefully across the kitchen into the living room all the way over to the stairs that lead up to his bedroom, holding his stomach. He doesn't make it all the way, because all that cake he ate was too much, and his stomach hurts and his eyes hurt and he sits down on the second to last step and digs his toes down into the carpeted tread, and why didn't they _come_?

He knows…he knows he wasn't very nice to them sometimes. He knows he ate Zell's special birthday cupcake and tore off the cover of Quisty's favorite book to use it as a shield, and he used to start fights with Squall all the time just cause, and there was that time he pulled Irvine's pants down in front of Selphie and laughed at how small his thingie was, all shriveled up in the cold winter morning, but they were all _family_. They were supposed to like him _anyway_.

He leans his head against the wall, and the worm keeps going down, down inside him, and he sniffs angrily and brings his arm sweeping up across his eyes, and he's not _crying_.

Matron and Cid start talking real quiet, but he's a good spy, just like one day he'll be a good knight, and he can hear everything they're saying.

"I can't have him staying here anymore, Cid. It's just…I just…I can't."

"Where are we supposed to send him? He's still too young for Garden, but he's old to be adopted out. It's hard to place older children; you know that."

"Yes, but the others-"

"They didn't have the kind of behavioral problems he has. Seifer's challenging. He's a lot for a family to suddenly take on. Everyone who's come to meet the children so far isn't willing to give him a chance. They see the way he interacts with the other children, and they want a child who's more…docile. Who's not going to give them gray hair early."

"_We _did. We took him on, and he's been fine; yes, he's certainly been a challenge, but someone else will see all the other sides to him."

The worm's ate him all up inside now.

He thought…he thought she kept him because he was special. She didn't want to let him go the way she did the other kids because she liked him best, because she loved him more, but now she's going to give him away, now she's going to make him go home with someone else.

But nobody _wants _him.

_Nobody wants him_. They wanted stupid flappy yap Zell, who sang and danced and recited his ABCs for the nice lady who came to visit them a few years ago. They wanted Irvine, who smiled too much and called all the ladies who came to see them pretty, even when they weren't. They wanted Quisty, and Selphie and even _Squall_, who never even _talked_, who just sat there all the time with that stupid _stupid _look on his dumb ugly face.

"We'll figure _something _out. He just can't stay here, Cid. He can't. Not anymore."

He gets slowly to his feet and climbs the last step to his room even more slowly, still holding his stomach.

Sometimes on really clear nights you can see all the way across the ocean from the window just above his bed; you can just keep on looking forever, because that's how far the world goes, on and on, and usually he sits with his feet tucked underneath him, nose to the glass, thinking about all the places he's gonna' go and all the people he's gonna' save.

But not tonight.

Tonight he just sorta' flops down on his bed, presses his face down hard into his pillow, and now the mattress suddenly starts vibrating underneath him and it takes him a couple of seconds to realize that the worm that ate him all up inside vomited everything back out; that he is not empty anymore; that he has been stuffed full of the burning that's inside his eyes-

He's _crying _ok so there _fine_; _happy now_-

The other kids didn't want him and now Matron doesn't either and he's just gonna' lay here and _cry _about it for a while, _ok_, you got something you want to say about that; wanna' call him a crybaby like Zell; he's not _Zell_; Zell cried over nothing; Zell was a dumb little _kid_-

He's gonna' be famous. He's gonna' be famous and save people and they're all gonna' _love _him and then she'll be sorry- _then she'll be sorry_.

He's gonna' show all of 'em, one day.


	10. Chapter Five

**A/N: Dee, you totally read my mind. I was working on this fic last night and I thought, ya' know, I should have time to post chapter five on Friday. And then about an hour later, up popped your review in my inbox. I was actually considering pushing the update off until Saturday, and your review reminded me that, oh yeah, there are people actually reading this aside from me.**

**Guys, if you haven't seen an update from me in a while, don't be shy about giving me a nudge. I get caught up in writing and tend to lose track of when I posted my last update- I actually thought I'd just updated this fic, but I see that I actually last posted on the 7th. This month has just flown by for me, for some reason.**

**Dragoon Dave- I'm glad you are enjoying thus far. This has been a really interesting piece for me to work on, and hopefully everyone will continue to find it interesting to read. We already know the story of FF VIII, and the game has already been novelized on this site (probably by better writers than I), so I figured I'd put a new spin on an old story. It allows me to take a run at something as epic in scope as a novelization while still getting to do my own thing.**

**RadiantRedWrath- Thank you as always for your reviews. I am glad to see that you find my action scenes fluid- fight scenes are something I love to write and tend to be kind of picky about.**

**catalysis- Hello! A new face- I'm always glad to see those. I'm very happy you are enjoying this so far, and I think it's probably my favorite story of mine as well, just because it's so different. **

**Guest- Thank you very much for your review. While I have to disagree that no other Seifer/Quistis writer quite nails their characterizations, I am nevertheless happy for the ego boost.  
**

**Tubby- You totally brighten my day. Thank you for your unabashed enthusiasm. **

**Chapter Five**

Timber

_I don't think hell is a 'where'._

_I think it's a 'when'._

_ I think it's the moment when blood runs from the mouth of a man you just crouched down to save, when it geysers out the back of his skull, smears fingers of red down the tree at his back. _

_ I think it's when you are just so _tired _that this man beneath your hands, who fought beside you, who had your back, who saved your friend- he begins to blur. He melts away into a number; he is not Mikel Brandon, with two children and a wife, with a fixer-upper on the beach where he was supposed to retire after just one more campaign._

_He is the tenth man today whose eyes you have shut, whose blood smudges itself down your fingers and underneath your nails, and this is when you know it's time to get _out_, this blurring. _

_This is when you understand the trap that has been set, that you have already sprung: You can't care. You can't _not _care._

_You bog down in caring, have to pull yourself free, stroke your way toward the surface through the copper-salt layers of all these broken, bloody men who died too soon. You want to know _why_; _who chooses_; why _him _why not _you _you are not special _you don't have a family waiting for you to come home-

_ You drown in these copper-salt layers. _

_ You do not sleep. _

_ You barely eat._

_ You get to keep your soul. _

_ This blurring, this morphing from man to soldier number- it sets you free, eases you down, lifts and lightens and takes away. _

_Not caring is a fog, and you stumble through it, grope your way uncertainly in the dark; there are no copper-salt men missing their arms, their legs, their heads; there are no questions; you do not wonder what happens to these men who are not going home to their families, who lay in pieces beneath your boots._

_ You are cocooned, enfolded, _safe_._

_ You lay your head down to rest at night and you do not weep for your fallen comrades; you sleep like the men who are piled all around you, who will never get to wake up again, who will never glare sullenly up into the rain clouds that gather on the horizon, who will never lift their boots just one more time, march forward just one final step, who will never again measure their lives by this lifting of their boots, this marching of their blistered aching feet. _

_ But there's always a price, did you know that? You can sleep, eat, laugh, breathe without the weight of a hundred different memories pressing down against your chest- Ky Bentson held the line until you were safely away, until his head flew apart in a thousand separate pieces; Jence Kell left behind a letter for his high school sweetheart, just in case, just so she would _know_- but paying up, handing in your dues- that's when you gotta' decide what's worth it and what isn't. _

_ So what'll it be? Peace or penance? Soul or sleep? _

_ Make your choice._

_ I try to settle on something in between. I shut Mikel's eyes and I bend my head and there's this Hyne-awful burning in my own eyes- full of gun smoke, damn things- and for just a moment I think about this wife and these two kids who were going to get their husband and their father back, who were going to finish their house and hold barbeques on the sand and welcome grandkids up the sky-blue steps of their porch, and then I move on._

_ It's the only thing you can do. You wait too long, you stand around letting grief hang itself like a millstone around your neck, then you're not gonna' need to worry about that gun smoke in your eyes anymore or the dirt and blood and pieces of bone beneath your fingernails or the taste of dead man inside your mouth. _

_ The recruiting posters never mention that, do they? All the little parts of your friends that you carry around against your tongue: Tim Han's brain and Janner Tenley's left finger and Kyler Denton's small intestine. _

_ You will never rinse your mouth enough. _

_ I step away from Mikel and shoulder my gun, walk away through the trees to other silent staring piles who have made widows of wives, orphans of children, and sometimes…sometimes you just wish there was a _switch_, you know? _

_ This switch flips off the burning in your eyes and the squeezing in your chest and it holds this moment suspended until you have acclimatized, until seeing the little sixteen-year-old boy who lied about his age, whose name you never knew splattered in messy chunks against the trees does not bend you heaving at the waist, until one face blurs into another into another into another, until you do not remember the one very specific face you were looking for in the first place. _

_ The Timber resistors don't have our numbers, but what they do have are guerilla tactics that more than even the playing field: You fight ghosts, shadows between the branches. Lotta' ambushes, which was what put all these good men on their backs beneath my boots. _

_ Sometimes these wars, they just come down to luck._

_ Here's a valiant war story for you: I was way at the back, taking a leak, when they smashed into our front lines and took down our first two units, our _best _two units, and melted back away into the forest. _

_ I fired two shots. _

_ They both missed, wouldn't ya' know it. I'm handy with a gun, don't get me wrong, but here in the trees, inside the fog, everything just sort of runs together, forms a shapeless black blob that doesn't tell you whether you've trained your sights on friend or foe. _

_ I think the sun is somewhere far above me, through layers of smoke-white that thicken as I walk._

_ Or maybe it's the moon. _

_ You stop noticing, after a while. A soldier's sleep cycle is from _when you can _to _get your ass moving _and you learn pretty quickly that rain or shine, day or night, you drop where you are and you do not get up until someone kicks you in the ribs and rolls your groggy disgruntled ass into the nearest foxhole, before you get it shot off. _

_ The mist falls. I feel its cool pinprick touch against my face, little greasy fingers picking through my stubble, and the ground sinks beneath me and my rifle shifts against me and I keep walking. _

_ I bend over, flick another pair of lids shut over green-glass eyes, and there's this…this unmooring inside of me, I guess you could call it. _

_ You ever feel like that sometimes? Like everything has suddenly let go, is now free-floating around inside you, getting all tangled up in one another, knocking into shit-_

_ Ward, he…he's been on leave for a little while now. Went back to Balamb, to visit with his mother, to help her understand how to go on without her youngest son. Nice lady; went to see her a couple of times after boot camp, and then a few times when we are all on leave together. Always trying to set me up with someone: her next-door neighbor (eighty-year-old woman I suspect might have been a man at one point), other next-door neighbor (young thing, fifty pounds of makeup, questionable wardrobe choices and an even more questionable appearance on the same corner every weekday morning), the harbor's dockmaster (man; pretty voice, though). _

_ You might be surprised to learn Mrs. Zabac can't even legally drive, on account of her eyesight. _

_ Ward is on leave, but Kiros is not._

_ Kiros was with me in these trees. He marched on ahead while I stopped to take a piss, and while I am somehow now weightless, set adrift, I am also a thousand pounds: I drag my boots one by one through the mud, set the heel carefully down, press it deep, pull the other after. _

_ You pray, walking through these bodies, looking at these faces, whether you are religious or not. _

_ You pray so _damn damn _hard: Don't let the next one be him. Don't let me become one of these men on their knees, weeping over a best friend, a brother. _

_ Don't let me find him inside this fog, underneath these trees._

_ If you have to…if you have to take him, at least let him die in the sun, in the light, in the warmth. _

_ Under this canopy of bare winter branches like stark black brushstrokes there is only cold moist darkness, like this forest itself is a grave, like we have already been buried, and some of us just don't know it yet. _

_ The fog reaches its cold soggy hand down into my lungs and I breathe, choke, cough; I drag, set, pull; I keep walking on and on and on._

_ I keep praying. _

_ Kiros and I met before we were even born, as our mothers used to like to tell us. Probably were conceived at the same time, they used to chuckle. _

_ Our mothers were big on oversharing. Like the time my mom giggled about this one technique of my father's- you know, let's not go there. Let's just shove that down deep, bury it as far as it will go. I was conceived thanks to a tricky combination of solar eclipses, ancient Trabian mountain rituals, and one timely delivery by a talking Chocobo, who dropped me off first, and then swung by Kiros' place on his way out. My father's magical man stick -AHHH MOM NOOO- had nothing to do with it._

_ We grew up climbing trees and breaking things (sometimes each other, although fights between us were pretty rare), and on weekends our parents traded off grilling burgers in the backyard and watched us run around like we were high on my mom's secret candy stash that we knew nothing about and certainly had not ransacked shortly before making our way outside with sticky lips that were definitely not rimmed in little hastily-chewed pieces of peppermint._

_ My mom and dad had just one kid, but I was never an only child. _

_ If I…if I find him in the mud, trampled down into it or spread out above it…I don't…_

_ How do you say good-bye, to someone who has always been there? How do you go _on_-_

_ Just…I just don't…I don't _understand_. Tell me _how_. Tell me I am not _going to find him_- _

_ I liked this girl, in sixth grade. Macie Darren. Cute blonde pigtails, even cuter freckled nose. She drew me a valentine in purple crayon and when I shyly accepted it, handed her back one of my own, she laughed and told me she was just kidding, that she didn't like ugly boys with long hair, that I looked like a stupid _girl_, and Kiros…he stepped right up next to me and told her that was fine, "Laguna doesn't like girls with fat pig noses who can't draw for shit," and she ran crying away to tattle. He got in trouble for making her cry, for the bad word, for not telling the teacher and handling it himself, but it made me smile when I'd been thinking about crying, it made me walk away with my head high and my shoulders back. _

_ You never saw one of us without the other, in an entirely Heterosexual Life Partner kind of way._

_ I was the first one to learn about how he lost his virginity. (Uh, you know, besides the girl. Wowee could that be taken in the wrong way.) He was the first to know when my dad told me he was leaving, when he walked out the door before my mom even got home. _

_ We traded toys, comic books, hand-crafted slingshots cobbled together from sticks I found in the streets. _

_ We grew up (and up and up and up, as our mothers liked to say); we watched all our high school friends go their separate ways, off to their different lives; I wrote; he took up the violin. _

_ We never grew apart. I showed him my first story; he shared his first crappy strains of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' on that busted old violin his mother found at a pawn shop downtown for twenty-five gil._

_ He plays real well now, you know. He took to it like he was born to it; he could make that busted old twenty-five gil piece of crap sound like it was weeping; he could make you want to cry with it._

_ I might find him here._

_ My next step might bump up against something solid, shift something lying limply outstretched beneath the dead winter leaves. His eyes will be open; he will look up at me without looking at me and I will remember the time we lit a bonfire in his mother's backyard with just a little moss and a couple of sticks; the way she yelled at us and sent me scurrying back home; how I picked up the old soup can with the string looped through a hole punched in its bottom and yanked it hopefully up to my ear, and ten feet away he did the same, and this string looped through holes in old soup cans pulled taut between our houses and we smiled and whispered and snickered over our cleverness. _

_ I never thought about what I would do without that boy, not even when we joined the army together, not even when I watched the first man I ever saw killed come apart into hot red confetti around me. _

_ He'd just _always _be there, I told myself. He always has been; there has never been no Kiros Seagill, for as long as I have been alive. We were born together, we will die together._

_ But dying is a journey you take alone. You might be helped through it by a kind hand on your shoulder and an even kinder voice in your ear, but no one goes into the light with you; no one helps you take your final breath or pumps your heart one last time; all you can do is hope it is over quickly, that you are gone before you realize you're alone, that no one is coming, that you are leaving everything behind and moving on to someplace you don't understand._

_ When you're young, you don't think about this journey. You always have another day, a next year, a tomorrow morning. You have heard about death and the way it lurks in between the cracks, trickles its way through to find you, but that's for the old-timers to worry about. You're busy living; you will lie down and wait quietly for death to seek you out one day when your dry matchstick bones ache from the cold and your brittle straw hair falls in clumps from your scalp, but not _now_; time to get laid; time to crash your first car, spike your first drink, break your first heart. _

_ But war…it ages you decades beyond your time, shoves your face down deep into death and holds it there in place, until you drown in all this knowledge. _

_ See, death doesn't care that you're only fifteen, that you have never fathered children, never stepped foot beyond the tiny town where you grew up. It doesn't give a shit that you never got to grow up at all. _

_ Ask the kid who lied about his age, whose name I never knew. Death checked him off the list and moved onto the next, and this kid who told the recruiters he was twenty, who had the loudest laugh I've ever heard, he walked right out into hot steel rainfall and he never laughed again. _

_ Never fired a shot, either. _

_ He didn't even die a hero._

_ He just died. One moment he lived and the next he didn't, and what do you wanna' bet he never even saw the transition coming? _

_ Yammering again, aren't I?_

_ Deep breath, Laguna._

_ Think of…think of Julia. Dark hair, bright eyes, fingers that pour themselves like silk across white-moon keys. _

_ Her hair always gathered up all the light in the room, reflected it back so hard it hurt my eyes, but I never got tired of looking at her; I wrote a lot of poems featuring that hair and the tiny little stars of illumination that sewed themselves into it, in the beginning. _

_ That was before I stopped writing, before every time I put pencil to paper it came out like the ground that stretches itself out and out and out beneath my boots: thick with death, splattered in blood, devoid of hope. _

_ Hope is a tricky thing, you see. _

_ War washes away all of your hope like an ocean chipping away at a jetty; you are whittled down, worn out, carved into pieces. It keeps beating you down, hammering you low, until one day you can't get up anymore, until finally all the insignificant little shards of your hope are picked up by this ocean and taken out with the tide, like garbage. _

_ I can see this in the faces of the men around me, in their doll-glass eyes. They toe another comrade onto his back and lean themselves wearily down on their rifles, wipe away a few tears and keep going, because, hey, not like they expected any different; not like they expected to find friends and brothers and lifelong companions blinking sleepily up at them in the fog, cradling broken arms or wrists or non-threatening flesh wounds. _

_ You know what you're going to find, walking through these woods. _

_ But, you know…this ocean that steals your hope has chiseled away at me, ground me down, and I still can't…I still can't picture his face somewhere on this ground, sandwiched between layers of others. He is my _friend_. He is more than my friend he is my _brother _and for my entire life he has _been here_; he has never left me behind; he has always given me someone to turn to and I _can't lose this_. _

_ There is still this part of me that does not yield, that has not crumbled, a little kernel of a boulder beaten smooth but not yet eroded. _

_ Sometimes you hurt so much this hurt reaches itself deeper, into another layer, pinches your nerves with this anesthetic fire that is so hot it freezes, so cold it burns, and what will this turn _into_, if I find him; how much worse will it get; tell me what _I have to do, Hyne, God, whoever the hell you are _tell me what I have to _do _to keep him-_

Breathe_._

_ In, out._

_ Heel, toe._

Breathe_._

_ Think of Julia, Laguna. White stars in brown hair and jackrabbit heartbeats and little breathless compliments you can't push past the knot that ties itself inside your throat._

_ The first time I saw her, Kiros and I had just ducked into the hotel to have a quick drink. This was before Ward, before a little dotted line looped itself like shackles across our wrists and bound us to our government. Her hair was longer then; it poured itself across her shoulders all the way down to her waist, and I was pretty much a goner right then. Pretty women: My Achilles heel. _

_ Kiros noticed right away, partly because he's known me all my life but mostly because my facial expressions are about as subtle as a Torama mating ritual- which involves a lot of noise and some rapeily forceful come-ons by the males of the species- and he got this little smile on his face and leaned across the table and told me to go talk to her. _

_ I nodded and stood up and swaggered over to the piano like the manly man I am, and she never even knew what hit her, my masculinity overwhelmed her that much. _

_ What I mean is that I leaned one elbow suavely down on the piano and said, "You're an amazing pianist," with my world-famous Laguna Loire Smile (patent pending), except somehow it came out a lot like "You're an amazing penis", which froze her fingers right on those keys and jerked her head up, her lips pressed into this thin little white line, and all I could do was _stand _there guppying my damn mouth open and shut, until Kiros' laughter finally unfroze my limbs and my feet turned themselves around and carried me stumbling back toward our table, where I hissed, "I just said 'penis' in front of that woman!" and Kiros laughed until he almost threw up all over the spotless white tablecloth beneath his cheek._

_ Yeah, he was laughing so hard he couldn't even sit up straight._

_ Asshole. _

_ He…_

_ The trees braid themselves together above my head, the branches are that thick, one vast black shadow-wall that knits itself together in the wind and then peels itself slowly apart, and these in-between moments, these gaps that show themselves like hints of teeth in a smile reveal the first hints of dawn pushing its way through fissures in the clouds. _

_ Then the branches flap shut, and this faint pink dawn-light is sealed away again, and there is only gray forever. _

_ I help a man struggling to turn over one of the bodies flip the guy onto his back, and then I step away as he chokes and goes down to one knee and bows his head against the body's mangled chest, and that's _not going to be me_-_

_ Please._

Please.

_ I don't know what I believe._

_ I'm not sure there is a God. I'd like to think there is, but he's never helped me and I've never believed in the whole 'guiding hand' thing (what kind of deity would be cruel enough to turn that 'pianist' into 'penis' anyway) and I just don't _know.

_My mom believed._

_ Look at what happened to her._

_ Church every Sunday, bible before bed, and…well…_

_ I can't think about that here._

_ But if there's something out there, just…just _please_. I don't know what else to say, how else to _ask_-_

_ I top a little hill that swallows my boots to the ankles, and I see him._

_ My tongue has baked itself into this shriveled little lump inside my mouth. I am all mummified saliva and dry-dust throat and my boots slide to a stop in the mud beneath my soles and my rifle clanks itself noisily down against my armor and I inhale so hard this breath traps itself in my lungs and hangs there, burning. _

_ You keep _hoping_, even when you know you shouldn't, even when all this hope that coiled itself up inside your stomach paid itself out inch by inch like a rope creeping up your chest and into your throat, where that damn ocean took it and hurled it into pieces against the rocks, and broke it into even smaller pieces when you tried to pick up the splinters. _

_ I…_

_ I…ah…got a little something in my throat._

_ He smiles at me. _

_ Couple of them die like that; not sure if it's just the natural sort of expression their face melts into when there is no tension left to hold it in place or if they were thinking about someone they loved when they went, but it happens. Not often, but sometimes._

_ But his eyes are not glass, his eyes still _see_, and now he slings the strap of his gun over one broad armored shoulder and crests the hill where I still stand, sinking, and he reaches out with his long dark fingers and clasps my forearm and for a moment he just stands like this, gripping, pressing his fingers down deep into the bone. _

_And then he pulls me in close to clap me on the back and now my rigor mortis skin dissolves and all of me relaxes into a smile. _

_ I lock this smile open around my teeth and slap his back even harder, and I am so _damn glad_; I drown in this gladness, let it suck me under, and I slap his back again and cock back one fist to launch a punch into his shoulder._

_ I pick up a pencil for the first time in months later that night, because for the first time in all these months I have not picked up a pencil, I have something else to share. _

_ I learned about something that is more enduring than blood and death and even hope. _

_ But let's get to that later._

* * *

"Do you remember your parents?" Seifer asks her suddenly, and she twitches one eyebrow up her forehead and winds her fingers together in front of her thighs, and where did this come from?

The fireworks tell her there was a family once, and she loved them.

But maybe…maybe they didn't love her.

The only letters she receives are from fans who do not care about the things she buries deep and smothers until they have gone so long without air they do not remember how to breathe. They want to know if she will marry them, what she does with her whip when she is not out on a mission, her bra size, and if she has ever fantasized about Darren Marks from Weapons 201, no reason, just a curious friend with a crush who wants to make sure she has no competition, and by the way, she's sort of inexperienced and does Quistis have any tips on the art of self-pleasuring?

She slips her fingers apart, sews them back together.

The fireworks tell her of a family that has not called, that has not visited, that dropped her off in Garden's polished echoing halls and left her there to die young.

It is not much of a family at all, she supposes.

The other children went away to live their own lives, to grow old and happy and together, to love and live and die warm in beds that cushion them softly all the way down into death.

"No," she says, watching these words paint themselves into the sky.

White on black.

Why is nothing ever so simple as these cumulous exhalations that flare like ghosts beyond her lips; white on black; stark words on an even starker background, no blending of the two, no in-between.

There is no gray, between this pale winter breath and starless midnight sky.

"Why?" she asks, watching him stretch himself out along the railing of the hotel room balcony, so casually, his arms flung carelessly over the thin layer of snow that frosts white the wrought-iron barrier. There is nothing stiff or upright or regimented about him, no military steel in his spine or caution in his eyes, and she would like to know just how it is that he lives from hour to hour, from day to day like this.

How do you take a step, when you are not sure where it's going to land?

He tips one shoulder up toward his ear. "Just wondering."

"Do you?"

He turns to her with both his arms still draped over the railing, elbows cocked up toward the sky, and now his smile stretches itself out, burrows itself deep, and a tiny star of a thing snaps on inside of her, smolders in her stomach like she has swallowed something hot.

It's the memory of his lips on her throat and his teeth in her skin that burns, and now she self-consciously reaches one hand up to scratch the spot on her neck and turns away with a scowl to look out over the black-river streets far below them. Out of the corner of one eye she sees him shift just slightly, smile even wider.

"Can't stop thinking about it, can you?"

"You mean your _assault_?" she snaps. Why can't he be _ugly_? Why does this smile that is just a little higher on the left have to mean anything at all to her- why couldn't she have just _left him behind_-

He isn't Squall. He isn't Squall and he will never be able to step into this hollow that Squall has carved deep and left empty, but sometimes when she is very lonely, when she thinks about how cold her bed is without someone there beside her to warm it, when she thinks about how she has offered up these little secret pieces of herself that she shows to no one and Squall only ever throws them back in her face with hardly even a look-

Sometimes she thinks about how Seifer Almasy would bed her in a heartbeat, would warm her sheets for just a night, and she wonders if twenty-four hours without this…this _folding _inside her, this curling tight and coiling up that hurts so badly, that chews down deep inside her where there are other layers of pain, would be worth it.

She's never slept with anyone before.

She has been holding onto this one last innocence, this final virtue she has left for _him_, for his rough keloid hands and his soft peppermint-gum breath, and for five years she has gripped it tight and not let it go, and he has not once looked in her direction.

He has not once sought her out first or picked her to be his training partner or sat himself down across from her at lunch, and for _five years _she has waited, and he's given her _nothing_.

Seifer Almasy would take her and use her and tumble back out of her bed just as quickly as he stumbled into it, but at least then she would not be pathetic; at least she would not still be waiting, hopelessly, helplessly.

She thinks about this, when she is lonely.

She thinks about how broad his shoulders are and the time she walked in on him changing in his room, his arms up over his head, shirt down over his face, and the deep grooves of his well-defined abdominal muscles, and the faint blonde trail of hair that terminates at the waistband of his pants.

He has probably slept with a hundred women. He will know exactly where to kiss and precisely how to rub, and he will leave her a limp dishrag pile in her bed without expecting anything more, and they will go on with their lives. He will smirk at her in class and wink at her behind backs and maybe once in a while they will rendezvous in the secret area or kiss their lips raw in the training room closet, and she will not be ironed flat inside because he does not want to stay, because he isn't looking for a commitment, and one day she will understand that you seize pleasure where you can, until it's your time, and you do not sit around waiting, praying.

There isn't enough time, for people like them.

There is time for brief crushes, one night stands, fumbling explorations in the dark.

Love takes a whole and breaks it down into parts, and then this whole -even if it is put back together along the seams- is shot through with flaws, will bend and crumble and break, and soldiers cannot bend and they are not allowed to crumble and once they break they are tossed aside to make room for those who are still faultless.

She leans her elbows down onto the railing, watches him angle his body in toward her. "Who do you think this 'Laguna' is? Why do we keep dreaming about him? How is it even _possible_, for us all to have the same dream?"

He shrugs again, looks out over the streets, toward the center of the town and the brightly-lit junk shop sign that shines like a beacon from in between all the peaked roofs and hand-carved mailboxes and sidewalks patrolled by soldiers. "Who the fuck cares?"

She does.

She cares about Jin Zabac, who died too young in a foxhole, who left behind a gaping hole in his mother and his brother; she cares about the boy with no name, who lied about his age, and the man who wrote one final confession to his high school sweetheart, and the soldier who will not watch his children grow up. She cares because he _made her_, because she felt Laguna Loire's heart shrivel away inside his chest, because his throat clogged up with tears when he stretched his hand down to shut the eyes of a man he barely knew; because Garden has tried for years to stomp out all this caring inside of her, to stamp it down into something shapeless they can fill back up with whatever they want, but the only thing she has ever perfected is her exterior.

Her face is a blank slate down which all emotion washes to collect like rainfall on the ground at her feet, but inside nothing has changed; nothing has been smudged out or stamped down and she feels so _much _sometimes, and she just _wants it to stop_.

She wonders if he can make it stop for just a night, if physical pleasure can wipe all this away, blur it out, if his hands and his tongue and his hard warm body slapping itself against hers will take it all away, just for awhile.

But she doesn't _want _him.

She doesn't want him and just thinking about taking him into her bed first, not saving herself, surges bitter ashy bile up into her throat and squeezes her chest down into a pinhole; she doesn't want to be _used _she wants to be _loved_; she wants _him _to do it and she-

Stop.

_Stop_.

She looks back through the winter-webbed sliding glass door that opens onto this balcony where she and Seifer stand, and her eyes track all the way back to the room through which they entered this balcony, and they find his bent head and his slender thin-boned hand and the gun blade he balances gracefully across his knees, polishing rag draped limply across its edge.

She shuts her eyes.

Just for a moment.

Just for a moment she stands breathing in the cold winter air and the powdery old vapor of the air freshener that chugs and wheezes and puffs forth faint little breaths of fragrance that smell like something that has not quite died, that is still clinging on.

Beyond this not-quite-dead air freshener that is still clinging on there is the smell of snow, of winter approaching too quickly, of something she cannot quite pinpoint.

Soap. Soap and…something that might almost be cologne but isn't, because this something she can't quite pinpoint is coming from Seifer, and he once told her that 'cologne' is only a word invented by fags like Chicken Wuss, to make themselves feel better about wearing perfume.

"See something you like?" he asks, sliding one eyebrow up along his forehead, and now he spreads his hands and cocks his hips forward a little farther off that snow-dusted railing. "Feel free to touch whatever it is."

She wonders if he has ever loved, if he has ever looked past himself long enough to fall for someone else.

He sneers and he jabs and he scoffs because he doesn't _understand_.

He will never understand.

No one has ever reached down inside of him with just a look and uprooted everything they can find with just this one casual glance; he has never waited silently in the wings for just one more of these looks, praying it will linger, hoping it will stay.

She rolls her eyes and turns away from him with a shake of her head, and she can still feel his eyes piercing her, driving themselves all the way down deep into things she does not want him to see, and why does he have to look so _hard_; why can't he train his attention somewhere _else_.

Maybe she should sleep with him. It is a surefire way to get him to leave her alone, to shift his attention off her and onto someone else, to make him stop _bothering _her all the time.

But her eyes slip helplessly beyond this winter-webbed sliding glass door to his bent head and his rag-wrapped fingers and she can't _do _that; she cannot purge Squall Leonhart from her mind and her heart and her fitful thrashing sleep with another man's hands -and certainly not _Seifer's _hands- and maybe she _is _pathetic; maybe she is so damned pathetic she wants to loop her whip around this pitiful aching weakness inside her heart and strangle it down into nothing, but she can't _help it_.

She can't help it.

Once on a training mission he looked at her with this ghost of a thing across his lips, this faint phantom twist of a smile he flashed just briefly in her direction, just for a moment, and this faint phantom twist of a smile…it _fueled _her, kept her going all the way through this training mission, beyond fatigue and fear and failure, and running on just this soft insignificant little twitch of his mouth, she scored the highest marks of the whole class.

She stayed up late that night, thinking about this faint phantom smile and the things it did to her and the way it smudged the skin at the corners of his eyes just slightly, creasing the smooth skin beneath his long black eyelashes.

Sometimes she wishes…sometimes she wishes she could tell someone about these things that not-quite smile does to her, let someone else help her pull it apart and examine it piece by piece by piece.

She just needs some kind of _meaning_.

She just needs to know…she just needs to know that she is not alone.

Somewhere out there is someone who finds worth beyond how quickly and efficiently and many she can kill, who sees beyond her body count, who knows that in the mornings she drinks peach tea and in the evenings green, who knows that her favorite book is about a boy who lives among fairies, and never grew up.

* * *

Down in the streets, in an alleyway perpendicular to the hotel, a man is being stabbed to death. The soldiers who work him over aren't quick about it; he watches their mouths flap in between jabs, sees their boots arc up and their fists flash out and little red droplets add themselves to the pale stars of snow that squeeze themselves like salt from the sky.

She hasn't seen it yet.

She's too busy looking at Pubes with her vagina in her eyes.

"Wanna' see something funny?" he asks, giving himself a little push to heave himself up off the railing, turning himself away from those flashing fists and arcing boots and little red droplets that add themselves to falling winter constellations.

It's not like he has to protect her, to keep her from seeing. Hell, she's seen everything he has, understands that in this world some people are the ones getting stabbed and some are the ones doing the stabbing, and all you can do is try to keep yourself on the non-pointy side of this truth.

It's just…the fucking _look _she gets on her face. There is an in-between moment before her walls come up, a crumpling up and a folding in and then a smoothing back over, and he just goddamned _hates _it.

She spares him the briefest look she can, just a split second tearing away of her eyes, and in this split second he steps forward and nudges the sliding glass door open and lets a little heat leak into his eyes as Squall's head lifts slowly up from his task, and now they lock onto each other, size each other up, douche to man, and Seifer lets something that is not quite a smile flicker fleetingly across his lips.

In the far corner Zell hops around like the spastic asshole he is, bouncing on the balls of his feet, rolling his shoulders, throwing jabs and groin shots and smoothly-oiled roundhouses.

He shoots a little spout of Fire from his palm, and his timing is just fucking perfect, catching the fucker right when he bends over to press the flat of his hands into the tops of his boots -his boyfriend must love that kinda' bendiness- and now Zell puts a good couple of feet between himself and the carpet and Quistis turns all the way around to face him, eyes wide, and he collapses helplessly back against the railing once more, holding his stomach.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" Zell howls, beating one gloved hand frantically down against the flames that eat away at the seat of his pants, and now Squall's hands freeze themselves where they are and Irvine cocks his head up from the barrel of his rifle, disassembled across his palms, and he just can't stop fucking laughing.

"_Seifer_!" she snaps.

"What? Oh, for fuck's sake, Trepe, that was the weakest fucking Fire spell that's ever been cast. I'd have gotten laughed out of class if I cast that my first time ever fucking around with magic. He'll be fine. The rest of us might not be as fortunate, though," he replies, gesturing to the black-frayed hole across Zell's ass.

"_YOU_!"

"Fucking calm down; it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to your ass, is it?"

Zell launches himself like a spear through the opening out onto the balcony and his stiffened neck jabs the front of his thick fucking skull into Seifer's gut before he has even caught his breath and now he teeters backward, slams his spine against the railing, and fucking _hell_, the asshole almost pushed him over the goddamned side-

An open-handed slap to one side of Wuss' head spins stars through his eyes but the guy's used to not thinking clearly, and now one hand flickers out and tangles itself in the fold of material at Seifer's throat and he is yanked forward, thrust up-

Zell's foot catches him in the pit of his stomach and he is suddenly upended, flipped face first over the asshole as Zell sprawls out flat on his back, and only a quick twist to one side saves his nose and smashes his cheek down into the pavement instead, and what the _fuck _does this asshole think he is _doing_-

He scrapes his hands up underneath him and rolls onto his back as Wuss scrambles lithely to his feet to loom angrily red-faced above him, and now an arch of his back kips him onto his feet and to Zell's left Quistis takes one tentative step forward, hand up, mouth open-

"Seifer, don't-"

His shoulder drives into the floating ribs down Zell's right side hard enough to lift him up onto his toes and toss him screaming back into the railing behind him, hands up in guard position, and now his hastily-chambered front kick is redirected away from Zell's dick by one quick downward swing of his hand so he barrels in low again, clamps his arms in a wrestler's bear hug around the dickhole's sides-

"You almost just knocked me over the side, asshole!" Zell plants a left hook on his ear hard enough to twist little black helixes of disorientation past his eyes and now behind him a pair of hands crash down onto his shoulders and tug sharply, shooting anesthetic winter down his left arm where one of these hands has dug itself into a nerve-

"Knock it _off_. You're going to bring this whole thing down on us."

She can just kiss his fucking _ass _if she thinks-

The hand that shoots anesthetic winter down his left arm discharges a flash of Thundaga into the muscle, just a little jolt, just enough to get his attention, and now his arms seizure open and Wuss slides himself neatly out of the way as Seifer puts both knees to the pavement hard enough to pop their caps.

"Fuck fuck fuck _fuck fuck let go_-"

She sinks down onto the balcony beside him, brings her face in close enough for him to feel her soft fucking breath slide itself across his skinned cheek, and why the _fuck _is she always close enough to kiss when he doesn't even have time to savor it-

"_Stop_, Seifer. You heard what Martine said before we left. You'll be demoted. You're on shaky enough ground that he might throw you out of the SeeD program altogether if you get just a couple more infractions under your belt. _I _am in charge of this mission, and I'm not going to let you drag my reputation down along with yours. We have a job to do. You will do that job competently, quietly, and when I make my reports to Martine, I will have nothing but positive things to say about your performance." She grips his shoulder a little tighter, shoots a few more stretching little fingers of Thundaga down into the muscle beneath her fingertips. "Is that clear?"

"I said _let go_, Trepe. You're really fucking pissing me off."

"Seifer, do you understand what I'm saying?" she snaps.

He understands that a woman three times smaller than him is fucking _humiliating _him right now, that he will never hear the end of this from Irvine, or from that little _fucker _who started all of this shit-

"Let. _Go_."

He won't hurt her but Seifer fucking Almasy bends to _no one's _goddamned will, and she is not going to _control _him.

"Seifer-"

There is just the faintest loosening of her hand, and the second the pressure on his fire-chewed nerve eases he pops his elbow up and out, rips her hand off his shoulder, and for all the instructors yammer on about how goddamned fast Wuss is, they've gotta' admit he's no slouch either: He whips both hands forward to curl them around her shoulders and now a shove and he rides her down to the pavement, torso to torso, one palm slipping around to cushion her head as she flops back onto the cement, and a quick forward shift of his hips and now both his knees pin her arms at the biceps, fastening them down tight to the ground.

He's never seen her look so pissed.

It kind of turns him on.

"Don't feel bad, Quistis. You're used to dealing with Puberty Boy; I'm a lot more man than he is." He works his knees down a little, presses the points of them into the nerve cluster at the edge of her triceps, leans forward just enough to make it hurt.

He feels her right ankle hook itself over his left and one brief upward surge of her hips flips him sideways and there is no hand to cradle his head on the way down and he slams it fucking _hard_, watches bright white semi-consciousness crosswipe itself over his eyes-

"Oh-"

"Get 'im, Quisty!" the cowboy calls from somewhere beyond this bright white haze that picks him up and cradles him in its feather-fluff fingers, leaving him drifting. "Now that's a woman, huh, Almasy?"

"Seifer? Are you ok?"

He blinks her face into vaguely coherent mist above him. "You just broke my fucking _head_."

He watches this vaguely coherent mist gather itself into a frown. "I'm sure you're fine. Just let me…there's a lot of blood. Hyne."

"No _shit_," he snarls.

"You might have a concussion, so just let me-"

"Eh, he's fine, Quisty. His head's way too hard for a piece of metal to put a dent in it. You'd need to, like, drop a whole building on it or something."

"Zell, would you just get me a towel from the bathroom, please?"

"Yeah, your nasty hot dog breath isn't helping."

"Seifer, just be _quiet_. Zell, please go get me a towel."

"Wowee, Quisty! What d'ya' do to him? Is this like some kinda' bondage thing? You know, where you guys knock each other around and you get all tingly and then you tie his penis up with your whip and-"

"It was just an _accident_, Selphie. Zell! The towel. Irvine, could you-"

"On it, darlin'. Dincht, stop flexin' in the mirror and get the hell back out here."

"Can't find one."

"What do you _mean _you can't find one? There has to be a towel somewhere in the bathroom."

"Oh yeah, ooopsie. I kinda' decided to treat myself and I did the whole spa shebang- well, it wasn't that shebangy because the headmaster made me put back like _half _my luggage because he said it was too much to bring along on a mission so all I could do was a hot oil treatment, a face steam, a body wrap and mask- ooh, you should try it Quisty; it's got seaweed and dead sea salt in it and it makes your skin all smooth and soft and sucks out any nasties like if you've got a pimple on your butt or something-"

"Where are the _towels_, Selphie?"

"Well, you have to use different towels because otherwise your face gets all germy and you break out so I had to use one for the face steam and one for the hot oil treatment because the towel seals in all the nutrients and it's really great for your hair -you should try it sometime, Quisty- and then I used one for the body wrap and-"

"I don't _care_. We'll just re-use one of them. I just need something to keep pressure on his wound."

"Weeell, I kinda' already took them downstairs because the one was all yucky from the mud and the other-"

"Didn't you get some more from the front desk?"

"They said they're out cause all the soldiers are staying here and stuff and they're booked solid, but no worries, Quisty! They said they'll have plenty more in the morning."

"Selphie, yours was the _only _room with any towels in it."

"I know! Score, huh?"

"I swear to fucking _Hyne _if you use Wuss' goddamned man panties on my head I will throw myself off the balcony."

"If you don't stop talking I'll use them as a _gag_."

"You know you're way better-looking with your mouth shut, Trepe?"

"Zell, if you would-"

"Don't even fucking _suggest it_."

"Then be _quiet._ If you'd just hold still, I could get a better look at your head."

"If you hadn't broken it in the _first _place, you wouldn't have to worry about looking at it-"

"Well, if _you _hadn't-"

"Make a lovely couple, don't they? I can just see 'em growin' old on a porch together somewhere, tradin' kidney shots and stories about their youth."

"Shut the _fuck up_, cowboy-"

"Seifer, could you just for one moment be _quiet_; your rudeness is entirely unwarranted-"

My _rudeness is _-fuck_- _are you _kidding _me-"

"Oooh! You know what we should do? We could paint his fingernails! I have this really, really pretty pink color that's all shiny, and I think it would work really well with his hair and his skin tone. You should try it too, Quisty!"

He surfaces through layers of fog to pry both eyes as wide open as they will go, and just inches from his face is Quistis Trepe's, wreathed in a little flicker of a smile that she coughs to cover up.

"I'll help ya', Selphie."

"Thanks, Zell!"

"The fuck you will, Chicken Wuss!" he snarls.

Quistis presses both hands to his shoulders as he snaps himself upright, one palm to his head, and now that fleeting flicker of a smile becomes a frown pulling tight the corners of her eyes. "Don't sit up so fast. You're still bleeding quite a bit."

He shakes her off, scrapes his boots up underneath him, falls back into her waiting arms as all the fog in his head comes down over his eyes and the starless midnight sky above his head peels itself apart one smoke-shred wisp at a time-

"I told you so," she says in his ear, her fingers resting lightly against his stomach.

_-i _told _you not to do that seifer i told you so i _told _you so-_

I told you so I told you so I told you so- why doesn't she just shove her fucking _I told you so _up her goddamned _ass_.

* * *

"Ya' know, you'd think that he wouldn't come here, with all the intel about him getting kidnapped and stuff." Zell scratches his head with the tip of one bare finger and slants his head down toward one shoulder, feeling his neck muscles ripple and stretch and give.

"Deling wants to show that he has nothing to be afraid of, that he won't be kept out by a few threats," Quistis tells him distractedly, her eyes on Seifer Almasy's broad bare shoulders as he steps out from beneath the awning of the Timber Hotel. "If he hunkers down in Deling City, it will look as though he's afraid, as though the Timber Owls are something to be concerned about, which is precisely the opposite of what he has been assuring Galbadia." She does not look away from Seifer as he shakes out his coat, as the guy's steel-cable biceps -asshole- flex and roll beneath the skin, and Zell crosses his arms and subtly flexes his own, because hey, Alm_ass_y, you're not the only one who's all manly-looking and stuff.

"Uh, Quisty…are you checking Seifer out?"

"What?" She jerks her head around and brings one hand up to nudge her glasses back to the precise center of the bridge of her nose, eyes wide. "No! Of course not. I just want to make sure he's moving all right this morning. He's not exhibiting any signs of a concussion, but he did lose quite a bit of blood last night."

"Uh huh." He sweeps one arm up over his head, bends it at the elbow, stretches his hand down toward his shoulder blades. "So, uh…Quisty…could I get some advice?"

"About what, Zell?" she asks, watching the procession of blue-uniformed soldiers clank clank clanking their way toward the hotel, Deling in their midst. The stinging glass-shard rain slaps itself down into his eyes and drips itself in rivulets off their armor, and still they march on, on, rifles at shoulder arms, the Presidential Guard murmuring ceaselessly into headsets that pop and crackle and hiss at their ears.

"Like, there's kinda' this girl, and you're kinda' a girl, so I was wondering if you maybe had any tips on how to get women…uh…not like you're a _lesbian _or anything, that's not what I'm trying to say-"

"Zell. It's all right. I know what you meant." She smiles so friggin' _kindly _at him, and man, what's a girl like this doing at Garden, learning how to take people apart with her hands and her whip and her gun; what's a smile like this doing on a battlefield, smeared in mud and blood and all the little pieces of her friends that are not coming home-

She looks like a mother, when she smiles like that. He can let go what little control he has over his mouth, let everything break and tumble and rush free, and she will not judge him, she will not laugh or turn away or tell him he is stupid: she will _listen_; she will smile her kind mother's smile and gently tousle all the spikes of his hair and he will understand how to make Ellone love him, just like that-

"Zell?" she prompts him softly.

"Uh, yeah. So, like I said, there's this girl…and-"

"Oooh! A girl? Who is it?" Selphie calls brightly. "Hey, can I borrow this? It's raining. Thanks!" She snatches Seifer's coat from his hands before he can even react and flips it up over her head, tenting it above her hair, and now she skips out toward them in little uneven stutters of steps, boots squelching in the mud.

"The fuck? Is she high?"

"Nope! I'm 100% natural, baby!" Selphie sing-songs. She pokes Zell's shoulder hard, lets her finger sink a good half inch into his bicep before pulling it back. "I think you're gonna' be fine, Zell! You're really cute, you know?"

He pulls his back up a little straighter, squares his shoulders. "Really?"

"Yeah! Your hair's stupid, though."

"What?"

"I said YOUR HAIR'S STUPID."

"I _heard _you."

"Hey! We could give you a makeover! I could cut your hair and then Quisty could style it- let's do it tonight, guys!"

Quistis stifles a little laugh with the palm of her hand, peels it slowly away when she has completely composed her face once again. "My styling techniques leave something to be desired, I'm afraid. Zell's hair would hardly turn out any better than what he's managed on his own."

"So, what? You're sayin' you don't like my hair, either, Quisty?"

"It's just a little…pointy, Zell. But your hair isn't what matters, of course; she should like you for who you are, not for what you look like."

"Wuss doesn't have any 'inner beauty', Trepe, just like he doesn't have any outer beauty, so you can stop feeding him that shitty chick flick self-help advice."

"I see you're feeling fine, if you are capable of your usual foul-mouthed stream of insults."

"I think my head's ok, although to be on the safe side, you should probably give it a kiss. I think you know which head I'm referring to, but just in case-"

"As I said earlier this morning," she interrupts him loudly, and now Zell watches Seifer fold both arms with a smirk, and he sidles up next to him to pop a short hard jab into his ribs, jerks one hand down to slap aside the return shot fired back at his own ribs, and she continues on: "We'll split into two teams. Squall, Seifer and Irvine will search the woods, see if they can find anything useful. The Timber Owls might have a bunker or something similar out there; it's the best place to hide a resistance group. Zell, myself and Selphie will remain in town, where we'll interview residents, see if we can find anything suspicious, who might be aiding them, hiding them, etc. I want the three of you to have an extra GF, just in case." She looks from Seifer to Irvine back to Squall, lingering just behind the group, face expressionless, shoulders hunched just slightly, one thumb hooked through the loop of his pants. "Who wants it?"

"Guardian Forces are for pussies," Seifer declares loudly. "Give it to Pubes."

She frowns at Seifer, lets her gaze slip cautiously over his shoulder to skim itself back to Squall.

"I'll take it," he says quietly.

"All right."

Zell bounces from one foot to the other as the soldiers clank clank clank past shuttered shops and tightly-closed residences, slaps at both arms to keep all his blood flowing: gotta' keep moving, if you wanna' stay loose. He got his ass handed to him in a fight one time by his instructor, because he didn't keep his muscles warm and his joints loose, and ok, so he got his ass handed to him _every _time he fought that particular instructor, but it wasn't his fault; the guy was really good, and just friggin' watch anyone else try and beat him- they wouldn't last _half _as long as-

There is an explosion.

It's kinda' a funny thing, this explosion.

Because it hits him- he knows it lifts him up onto his toes and flings him sprawling backward, clipping Seifer's shoulder, grazing Irvine's ribs- but he doesn't really _feel_ it, not at first.

He's not even exactly sure what just hit him.

He's seen this happen before. In battle, there's this…pause between the hit and the reaction, this infinitesimal moment before your body realizes that it is supposed to be down, that it can no longer go, and sometimes this pause gives someone just enough time to fire a last shot, to thrust a final riposte, but he has no time for any of this because there is no one to _fight_; where the hell is the enemy even _at_, and now he watches mud spray out from either side of him, go spiraling away past his outstretched fingertips-

* * *

They hit hard and fast, and somebody from Galbadia is playing for their team, because they know the exact layout of the formation, precisely where to strike to break apart Deling's shining blue-armored shield.

They drop the guards to either side of Deling first, move outward from there, pick off those who panic and break away, who fire blindly back at these assailants that cannot be seen.

She is holding Squall's hands, when the first shot is fired.

Transference of a GF is an intimate thing, a brief melding of minds, a melting together of thoughts and feelings and sensations, and she clutches his fingers just a little tighter, just a little longer than she needs to, spends her time feeding Shiva into his brain-

And then behind her there is the loud bone-crack of this first fired shot, a thud, a splash, cold mud-splatter across her back and over her shoulders-

Squall tucks himself into a roll that carries him neatly to his feet beneath the awning, and now Lionheart gleams in the rain, winks back little silver needles of reflected downpour that slit her eyes, they are that bright-

Her pivot and the drawing of her weapon are a single motion, and now she crouches, lets Save the Queen unravel in the mud beneath her boots-

Seifer and Irvine haul Zell Dincht's limply unresponsive body back toward the hotel, Selphie in front of them, Shield spinning itself in disentangling blush-rose ribbons from her fingers, and oh, Hyne, not _him_; he is so _nice_; he is the type of boy her mother would want her to bring home to dinner, if she had a mother who cared-

Quezacotl unfurls in the sky above her.

Steel-jacket rainfall hisses around and past and through him, and he spreads his wings wider, extends them out as far as they will go, from tip to tip, sheltering Selphie and Irvine and Seifer and Zell underneath him, and one quick glance over her shoulder shows her Squall's face, tight in concentration, and now another soldier falls and another gun echoes its harmless rattling rounds into the sky, arcing them up into the thunderclouds like birds taking wing-

"Get to Deling," she orders. "Protect him however you can."

"Fuck _Deling_," Seifer hisses, reaching the awning as Squall sprints out from underneath it, and very gently he lays Zell down on the sidewalk and readjusts his slick red hand on Zell's neck, and oh _Hyne_, there's so much blood-

"Fucking _hit him with something_, Trepe. You have to have a Curaga or something."

Irvine crouches on Zell's left, Selphie beside him, and Seifer spreads his hand out wider, flattens his palm down harder-

"I said _give him something_." His voice is a thin little strained-tight wire of a thing, and there is so much raw rasping pain in this sharp plea that she stretches out one hand for his forearm, lays her fingers down over his bare blonde-frosted skin.

"Seifer…there's a major artery in the neck, right where he was hit, and even a Curaga isn't going to-"

"I don't _fucking care where he was hit_. Fix him!"

* * *

He feels Selphie slip her hand into his own, and these cold-numb fingers and her gentle little squeeze barely even register, because Dincht is so _pale _and Seifer…the guy just comes _unraveled_, starts screaming right in poor Quisty's face, and he wants to take him by the shoulder, pull him back, shake him outta' this misdirected rage, but he can't move his hands and he can't feel his fingers and his rifle pools uselessly across his numb wooden legs, and Hyne-dammit, don't let this be _it _for him, Hyne, please, oh _fucking _please-

* * *

"I said goddamned _fix him_."

He keeps his hand on Wuss' neck and his face right in Quistis' personal little fucking bubble that is so goddamned important to her, and he ignores how cold the asshole feels, the way he is so goddamned _still _when he can never fucking hold still-

"_I don't have anything stocked. _Fucking _do something_, Quistis."

She's looking at him like he is something to be fucking _pitied_, like he doesn't know the odds, like he doesn't feel the blood pumping through his fingers or see the chalk-corpse pallor that comes to steal away all the color from his friend's cheeks, but just fucking _try_, please, _please_- he can't just _sit here_-

He says it out loud, and his voice cracks the word and spits it back up in pieces, and for once he doesn't give a shit, because all this blood pumping out beneath his fingers is still going, spurting up between his knuckles, and he has seen this sort of death lots of times before, watched guys empty themselves out across the ground beneath his boots, stepped right over them and kept going -what the fuck else are you supposed to do- but not fucking _Zell_. Not this one asshole- that's all he's asking, Hyne, if you're out there,_ not this one_-

"_Please_."

She slithers forward out of her crouch just a few steps, just three tentative little movements, and he reaches out his other hand, the one that is not drenched in red, the one that is not so slippery he can just barely hold it in place, and he grabs her wrist and squeezes hard enough for her to feel the pressure all the way down to the bone, and don't fucking _look at him like that_, just fucking _help _him-

"Fucking _please_, Quistis."

He watches her take a little steadying breath, and he keeps his hand on her wrist, pressing, bearing down until this steadying little breath she takes stabilizes him just slightly as well, and now her hand slides over his and she whips her head up to face the others behind him, and this is the steel-balls Trepe he needs, the one who's going to take care of shit, who's going to fix all the problems others have caused-

"Irvine, provide cover. Selphie, I want you on mag-support. We're not leaving Squall all on his own out there. All of us crowding Zell is not helping him, and it's not going to save him. You do your jobs, take care of the mission, and leave this to me."

They both nod solemnly, and he marvels at how fucking _solid_ her voice is, how fucking _sure_, because her hand shows the lie and he pulls his wrist away at last, because he doesn't want to feel it.

She flicks her eyes up to his as the others scurry off to take up their positions. "Can you find a pulse?"

He shuts his eyes and gropes around on the bastard's neck and what he is rewarded with is a faint little kick beneath the pads of his fingertips, and for just a moment he can't tell her about it; all he can do is fucking choke a little and remember the first time he realized Matron didn't want him, and the way he cried like a baby, and how similar that moment felt to what is going on inside of him right now.

"Yeah. It's there. Barely."

"All right. I don't have any potions, but I'm going to administer a Life and see if we can't jump-start him just a little. Keep pressure on that wound."

"Why not a Full-Life?" he squeezes out.

"Because it's too dangerous to administer that on someone whose heart is still beating. It's intended as an absolute last resort on the battlefield, to get someone's heart pumping again when you don't have the proper medical equipment. I could kill him, hitting him with one of those while his heart is still beating."

She lays her fingers gently across Zell's forehead. "This is going to hurt, but I need you to keep your hand on him, ok? We need to keep pressure on that wound."

"Fine." He grits his teeth and she shuts her eyes and now it is like someone hooks him directly into a power line, shoots its hot white current through all his limbs down to the very tips of his toes where they spasm inside his boots, and fuck, _fuck_- Wuss owes him a goddamned hand job or something-

"How is it now?" she asks, taking her hand off Zell's forehead and pressing it to her own, swaying just slightly.

He flicks his fingers up to where Wuss' jaw angles down into his neck, and shit shit _shit _there is _nothing_-

She sees this answer in his face and sets her hand back down on Zell's forehead, and from behind her glasses, her eyes regard him very steadily. "You need to let go now, Seifer. The spell's not going to enter you directly, but since you're not the caster you aren't grounded, and getting hit with that much voltage could potentially stop your own heart."

He _can't _let go; the guy's fucking _draining _himself here; the second he lets up on this hole in the side of Wuss' neck the rest of the asshole's life will leak itself down onto the pavement, stain the knees of his pants and the toes of his boots, and she can break his fucking fingers if she wants, but see if she gets him to fucking let go.

"No," he snaps.

"_Seifer_."

"Don't fucking _argue _with me. Just do it. He needs pressure on the wound; you can't do it and cast the spell at the same time. _Do it_."

Something flickers briefly in her eyes and plays itself even more briefly across her face, and then her fingers flare blue and his world flares white and he grinds his teeth down until the fuckers creak warningly, and just hold on, goddammit, _just hold on_-

The blue sucks itself back into her fingers and the white retreats slowly, fucking slowly to just the edges of his sputtering cotton-cloud vision, all fuzzy around the corners, and now something twitches beneath his hand but don't get your hopes up yet, asshole- everything about him is twitching and jangling and flinching, and maybe it's just his own hand-

No-

_No_-

A real live fucking _heartbeat _jumps beneath his fingers and something clenched inside his chest unravels from around his heart and he could fucking _kiss _her; he could fucking kiss _Wuss_-

"His heart's going!"

"All right, good," she says tightly. "We need to stop the bleeding now; if we can't do that, it doesn't matter if he has a pulse- he won't much longer."

It's gone.

It's fucking _gone _it was _just there_-

"Fuck fuck fuck _fuck _it stopped-"

"Seifer, calm down."

"Don't fucking _tell me_-"

"I said _calm down_," she says coldly, pressing the point of her thumb hard into the bones of his forearm, bearing down until he winces. "You are _not _helping him. I need you to take a deep breath. I need you to not panic, Seifer, ok? I'm going to take his radial pulse; he's lost enough blood that it may just be difficult to get a pulse on him." She takes Zell's hand gently in her own, presses her pointer and her middle fingers just beneath his wrist. "All right. I'm going to try something. I'm going to take your spot, all right? I'll slip my hand beneath yours; when I do, let go and step back."

"What are you going to do?"

"Just _do it_, Seifer. He doesn't have time for you to argue with me."

He stays just long enough for her face to soften, for her to slip that pale fucking hand from her own and lay her fingers down across his shoulder. "Just trust me, Seifer. I won't let him die."

_Fuck _it.

She slides her hand carefully beneath his own, applies her own pressure, and now he lets go of his friend for the first time in minutes and shifts over just enough to give her room, feels the hard pavement dig into his knees and the cold little shit-splatters of mud in his mouth-

The blue haloes out from beneath her fingers again, spills itself all across Zell Dincht's eerily motionless body, and he shuts his eyes as tight as they will go, squeezes down until nothing leaks out from beneath his lashes.

* * *

Two of the bodyguards flanking Deling do not go down.

They turn on the others, use the chaos to spray down a layer of hot lead, and from above, around, wherever it is these shots are coming from, more of these hot lead layers rain themselves down, gouge little superficial holes in Selphie's Protect and Squall's Shield-

He fires from the hip, watches the first of these two bodyguards spit up little pieces of things that are supposed to still be inside him, works the bolt, fires again.

Squall seizes Deling's arm. The action disrupts his Shield; Selphie casts another on him and above them Quezacotl spins himself sideways, spirals downward, is shredded into mist.

Squall loses himself and Deling amidst the remainder of the scattered Galbadian soldiers, pulls the man in tight to him, yanks him along by the collar; they are picked up by this wave of scattered Galbadian soldiers and swept along on its tide, and now Selphie comes hurtling after them, casting, reinforcing her Protect and the Shield that shimmers faintly into existence around Squall and Deling, who flails his arms and nearly takes out the Hyne-damned thing all over again.

"Get to the hotel!" Squall yells. "We have to get out of the open."

Retreating to the hotel will take him past Seifer on his knees and Zell on his back, Quistis crouched beside them both, and man he can't _think _about that right now; Quisty will patch him right up; she will not let him die; he will not bury a friend, not today, Hyne-dammit, not _now_-

"Go!" Squall yells, and he slings his gun across his shoulder and pulls his hat down low over his eyes and he runs.

* * *

He takes a shuddering breath that sucks in rain and mud and this faint metal aftertaste he's pretty sure is a fine wet mist of blood, and he keeps both hands fisted on the pavement, staring blankly down at Trepe's white hands and Zell's even whiter cheeks-

Do not let him _die_; do not let him fucking _die_- she has _always _been fixing things, putting them back together, mopping up other people's messes- _do not let him goddamned die, Quistis_-

"Get him into the hotel," she says weakly, pressing her hands down into the pavement beneath him. "Carefully. I think you can move him."

He blinks at her through layers of rainfall that come down and down and down. "What?"

"I used a mixture of Curaga and Full-Life and I've managed to establish a strong pulse, and the Curgaga sealed up his wound; he's no longer bleeding, for the moment. I'm still a little concerned about using that Full-Life, however; his heart may not have actually stopped at all earlier- like I said, sometimes it can be hard to find a pulse on someone who's lost a lot of blood and consequently has a weak heart rate. That's the problem with medical attention administered on the battlefield-you don't have the liberty of taking the time to-"

He doesn't give a _shit _about all her look-how-much-fucking-smarter-I-am-than-you medical jargon-

What she is saying is Zell is going to be ok; his goddamned heart is beating; he is still hanging on- _he is still fucking hanging on_-

He can't even-

How the fuck is he even supposed to _thank _her for this-

He doesn't have the goddamned _words_.

"-I'm not promising anything, and he'll need to be monitored carefully, and we need to get him out of here as soon as it's safe, to a facility more equipped to deal with-"

He lunges forward, and now his hands crush her shoulders and pull her into him and she shuts abruptly up, her forehead impacting his chest, and for one brief moment he holds her as hard as he can.

"Um," she says, and he shifts back just far enough to slide his hands from her shoulders to the sides of her face, cradles her soft white-wax cheeks in his palms.

He shuts his eyes and his lips find her forehead almost brutally, and for one more moment he keeps them pressed there, breathing in her soft vanilla-soap skin and her matching shampoo, and if they could just fucking _stay like this_-

But Wuss needs him.

Wuss needs him and the cowboy might too, out there in the middle of all that bloodshed, and you don't leave your posse behind for a women, even _this _woman.

"You're a goddamned _genius_, Trepe."

* * *

His lips are soft.

Something inside of her shifts and trembles and shakes itself loose.

_-it's just a _bird _trepe what are you crying about look stop _stop _ok fuck don't cry here you can have mine if it means that much to you i said _stop crying_-_

For just a moment, she is frozen.

Here under the awning, the fight has not yet reached her, and for this infinitesimal moment she can simply stay like this, not understanding, just kneeling dumbly blinking with her palms pressed flat to the pavement underneath her, and now as she watches he takes Zell gently underneath the arms, jerks his head to someone she can't see-

And through wet gray mist Irvine materializes, rifle over his shoulder, duster soaked, and together they lift Zell carefully off the street and now comes Selphie, still encapsulated in her softly shimmering globe of Protect, and she holds the hotel door open for them, shaking rain from her hair-

Squall kneels beside her.

Thin little rivulets of water streak his cheeks, leak from underneath his eyes like tears that run themselves down his face and into his mouth, and she watches his free hand lift in a little flick of a wave, motioning to the stream of soldiers that pour themselves past, Deling sheltered once more in their midst.

"I think we're all right for now, with Deling inside," he says quietly. "They don't have the numbers to engage us- if they did, we'd be able to see them. We probably took out a significant number of their force yesterday." He pauses. "Quistis?"

_-oh fuck off you assholes who cares if she gave a shit about some stupid bird you're probably just jealous because she's smarter than all three of you put together and she'll be running garden someday yeah well i don't really care if you fail me this test is fucking stupid anyway-_

"Quistis?"

They are only little fragments, pieces of images and thoughts and words that do not slot themselves together into a whole, and she doesn't _understand_; it is Seifer's voice in her ear and his hand on her arm and his snarling wrath aimed off into dry wind-swept hills of sand, but when did this _happen_-

It doesn't matter and nothing has to make sense, all she has to do is _move_: she picks up her whip from the mud and blood-smeared pavement underneath her and stands, the kinks in her legs buckling her knees just a little, and beside her Squall rises as well, and now in the distance the chattering machine gun cries die out, fade back into the drumming drumming rain, and she coils up her weapon as she goes, follows him back into the overcrowded lobby where too many faces tip themselves toward her, look up with hope in their eyes.

She has seen these too many faces tipping themselves toward her before, looking for guidance, for explanation, for a path to take, and she lifts her shoulders up and up and up beneath this burden, until they do not bend or bow or shake.

"I need you and you and you," she orders, pointing. "Irvine and Seifer, stay with Zell. Selphie, you're with us. I want you to pursue and _capture_. Do not engage the enemy unless absolutely necessary. Do not kill them; use nonlethal force unless you have no other choice. Let's go."

* * *

"Zone?" someone whispers beside him in the dark.

He watched them take Watts out like garbage, and throw him away in a ditch.

He watched them _take Watts out like garbage and throw him away in a ditch. _

Is that fair? Is it fair that Malena is never going to have his children and his mother is never going to bury her son because they tossed him like trash into sticky wet leaves crusted in mold and bird shit; is it fair that in coming months, until they have all flown south for a warmer home, these birds will shit on him as they have shit on these leaves- _is it fucking fair_-

How many times tonight, lying in this dark, with the sounds of breathing all around him, with the creaks and pops and bone-snaps of an old house settling, has he tongued back a little adhesive clot-heap of tears, and is this fair either-

His father once told him that nothing about freedom is fair: you fight inch by screaming painful inch for it, push forward until you have nowhere else to go, take your victories bloody with a side of dead friend, and when you have at last won this freedom, you stand with your broken bones and your ripped-off nails and all the little holes in your heart where each new bloody victory has suctioned free another little piece of you, and you watch someone else come to take it all away again.

But he's only _eighteen_.

He is supposed to be at home, playing shoot 'em ups on his parents' 40" screen, making shyly subtle moves on his girlfriend, losing parts of his innocent that have nothing to do with friends blown to pieces while his parents sleep on blissfully unaware above his head.

But two soldiers raped his girlfriend until she bled out across the pristine white carpet of her family's pretty little cottage-style home, and it doesn't matter that their commanding officer shot them on sight for such unprofessional conduct, she is still gone, she is still _not here_, and his parents' 40" screen has been gone a long time now, sold for the funds to fight this war, and his parents themselves are long gone as well.

And Watts…

Watts was all he had left.

Watts smothered his cries when they marched his father out into the streets and executed him on his knees in the rain; he pulled him back into the shadows where they could not see, where they would not come for him next, and he taught him when to run and how to fight, and they just _threw him away_.

He was not trash.

He was a _friend_.

He knew exactly how to time a joke, and when to shut his mouth; he played soccer; he made the best apple pie Zone ever tasted.

Those bodies Galbadia just chucks out like they are _nothing_- they had people who _loved _them; they took up hobbies and they sucked at bowling and they wanted children who would grow up in peace, who would not have to fight.

"Zone?"

Watts…Watts, man…he promises…Hyne, it's just so _hard_, you know? He doesn't _want _to crouch in basements like a hobo; he doesn't want to grab sleep where he can, to be shaken awake by a high school junior with a gun in his hands and tears on his cheeks, because he lost another friend, because he took another life.

He is tired of taking lives and he is tired of having them taken from him and he is just exhausted;why can't he give up;why does it have to be _him_-

Why does giving up have to be so easy? You can just relax into it, melt, let it carry you off, sweep you along; you will never have to worry about your next meal, the way you will have to choke it down between firefights in the woods, how it sticks in your throat on its way down, the way it tastes like sawdust, stripped of flavor, pared down to nothing.

"Zone…it's ok. We'll get 'em."

His father also once told him that he would rather live free, or die trying. Freedom is a choice, he said: you can keep it or you can sit on your ass and watch it drain away; hold it close or let it go.

He will make this choice over and over, every night when he lies down to sleep with one less friend among them; he will ask whether it is worth it; how many times can he mourn; how many ways can he lose.

He will ask himself these questions and he will present himself with this choice every day, every night, and it will never get any easier, and he will never have any other answer.

_You just go forward_, Watts used to tell him. _You just keep pushing, ok? _

_All you can do is try._


	11. Interlude Five

**A/N: Hey, guys. Remembered to actually update a little earlier this time. I blew past the 100,000 word mark on this story last night, so it's moving along at a good clip, despite the fact that I've been cheating on the FF VIII fandom with Vampire Diaries. I know, I know, shaddup- it's good for me to have something new to write every once in a while, and Vampire Diaries (the tv show, not the book series) has another tortured bad boy for me to explore. I just can't resist 'em.**

**Thank you as always for your insightful comments; I appreciate them very much.**

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_I talked with Matron the other day, and she said you were going to be leaving the orphanage. She said someone else was going to take you in now. I was wondering…I know it's been a while since you heard from me…but I was wondering if maybe you'd like to keep in touch, when you go to your new home. _

_How have you been lately? I'm doing well. I hope your new family is nice. _

_Sincerely, _

_Quistis_

He holds the letter open across his lap.

All around him are teetering piles of toys and half-filled bags of luggage that he started packing three days ago when Matron first came to tell him about his new home, but packing's boring, and stupid, and he shouldn't have to do it; that's why crybaby Zell should still be here, to do it for him.

He smoothes out the creases in the page.

He _knew _she missed him; he _knew _she couldn't stay away for long; he's leaving and now she wants to make sure he'll still be her friend- she probably _loves _him, and that's gross, but he knows she can't help it cause he's 'irresisttatible' and all.

He wanted to scribble out a reply the first day he got the letter, but she's gotta' wait until he _feels _like it, cause she made him sit around here for almost a year without saying anything to him and that was fine because he didn't miss her or anything, but she'll think her gross cootie _girl _face is important to him or something, if he sends her a letter back right away.

Tomorrow he's leaving, though. Tomorrow some other lady from some other orphanage will put him in her car and zoom down Matron and Cid's driveway back toward the city, away from the ocean, and she probably won't even make cookies like Matron does, or tell him stories when he can't sleep, or know just exactly the right amount of sugar to put in his lemonade.

He broke all his pencils, when she stopped writing. It wasn't his fault -she _made _him- she shouldn't have _left him alone_; Matron doesn't love him anymore and her letters were the only nice things he had left and _why did she stop writing_-

He rustles around in the half-open drawers of his nightstand and Quisty's old desk and he finds this box of crayons he remembers Selphie trying to put up her nose, because Zell bet her she couldn't fit them, and he remembers laughing at her because she only made it to 'atomic tangerine' before Matron caught her and made her take them all out. He dumps them out on the carpet beneath him, picks through them all until he finds 'magic mint', because it was the last one in the box and he knows for sure _sure _that it never made it up Selphie's booger hole.

_Dear Quisty,_

_My new mom is coming to get me tomorrow. Matron didn't want her to take me cause she loves me so much, way more than all the rest of you, but my new mom begged her really really hard so Matron said ok and I'm gonna' go home with her now. _

_I know you miss me and that's why you're writing but you're gonna' have to wait a while, because I'll probably be having so much fun with my new family that I'll forget about you. I know you really like talking to me though so I'll write to you from my new home when I'm bored and don't have anything better to do which will probably take a while because everyone there is going to like me so much. I'm going to another orphanage, but I'm not gonna' be one of the orphans cause the lady who runs it likes me so much that she wants to adopt me just for her, even though she's got lots of other kids she could choose from. She said I was her favorite kid that she'd ever met and I told her about you and crybaby Zell and stupid Squall and all the others, and she thought you guys sounded pretty stupid too. She's glad you were all picked first cause it means that I was left just for her._

_Talk to you later,_

_Seifer_

* * *

He's such a _jerk _sometimes.

But she sits on her bed with her legs curled underneath her and the sun outside her window melting into warm red dusk, and the corners of her eyes prickle like needles and she sniffs a little and rolls one corner of her blanket between her fingers, and she can't hate him.

What Matron told her was that she and Cid couldn't take care of him anymore, that she was sending him off to an orphanage in Balamb, that she hoped there someone would adopt him at last.

There is no mother waiting for him. This woman who runs this other orphanage, who took him in last minute, as a favor to Matron, does not think he is special.

She does not want him.

Sometimes he deserves this not wanting, this passing along to someone else, but she knows what it is like to never feel at home, to not be welcome, and there is no harm in allowing him this small little lie.

_Dear Seifer,_

_I hope this letter reaches you. I'm glad you're going to be adopted. I hope you have some brothers and sisters to keep you company; it's kind of boring sometimes, being an only sibling. And of course, you were very annoying while we were all together at the orphanage, but it wasn't boring, being with you, at least. _

_Matron says you're going to Balamb; I've always wanted to visit there. Do you know which school you're going to be attending? I go to Crossley Academy; it's a private school here in Deling City. It's nice._

_Be nice to your new mother. You aren't horrible, when you smile. She'll like you if you smile._

_Sincerely, _

_Quistis_

* * *

The kids at this new orphanage heard a story about how at the last minute he cried, and clung to Matron's waist, and wouldn't let her go, that he promised to be good and quiet, but that's a bunch of _shit_.

He took it like the little man he is.

That's what Matron used to call him: her _little man_, cause he's real, real tough for a kid, you know. He'd never _cry _over something stupid like that. He'd never hold her as tight as he could, because he was never going to get to hug her again- he'd never beg her to stay, to not send him away with this old lady who smelled like lemons and couldn't get his name right.

He stepped into the car and he smiled and waved through the window, and the old lady who smelled like lemons and couldn't get his name right told him how excited she was to finally have a son, how much fun they were going to have, how big and brave and handsome he was already.

He has a lot of fun here.

He doesn't wait impatiently pacing on the curb for the mailman to come, because Quisty's letters aren't _important _to him or anything -he's got a lot of friends here, you know- and he doesn't run to his room carrying an envelope with her name on it like he's got nothing better to do, because he _does_-

She could stop sending them completely, for all he _cares_; she could just start ignoring him again and that would be fine, there's cuter girls here anyway, like the one who sits next to him at lunch and shares with him pieces of sandwich with the crust cut off-

Matron used to cut his crusts off.

This lady doesn't, because she's too busy, because there are ten of them and only one of her, but that's fine, cause only _kids _want their crusts cut off anyway.

He bets Zell still gets his cut off.

_Dear Quisty,_

_It's really great here. Yesterday me and Dagen made a snowman and then we chopped its head off and the girls all screamed because they got hit with these big puffs of snow when we did that. I bet you would have screamed too._

_I'm not going to some stupid stuffy boring private school I'm going to the one just down the road from my new home. It's called Peachtree Elementary and I bet it's better than your stupid private school. Do you have to wear a uniform? We don't have to wear a uniform here we can wear whatever we want so I wear my favorite shirt the green one Matron got me for my birthday last year the one she says brings out my eyes. _

_There are a lot of girls at my school who want me. Matron said that was gonna happen so I shouldn't be surprised but you're all gross and one day one of you is gonna give me cooties and then I'm gonna have to be vaccinated._

_I bet none of the boys at your school want you cause you're so bossy and stuff. _

_Do they? I think you should punch them in the nose if they try to kiss your or something. _

_Write me back,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_PLENTY of the boys at my school want me. I'm very popular; we had a school dance two days ago and three boys all asked me to go with them. I couldn't because my mother needed me home to take family pictures with her and my father, but it was nice to get invited anyway. _

_Do you have any dances at your school? You're probably terrible at it; boys can't dance. And I don't see why you'd have so many girls after you; you were always mean to me and Selphie. I KNOW it was you who kept putting worms in my bed. Girls don't like that sort of thing; if you like a girl, you're supposed to be nice to her. I don't think you know how to be nice to girls, so why would any of them like you?_

_You're a jerk,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_I don't WANT girls to like me anyway, and I CAN TOO DANCE. I'm good at everything. You're just jealous, cause even if I DID go to your stupid school, I wouldn't have asked you to the dance. Boys don't like it when girls are BOSSY._

_Kiss my ass,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_Where did you learn that kind of language? Matron would have made Cid wash your mouth out with soap, you know. You're obviously picking up bad habits at your new home- did one of the other kids teach you that? _

_I was going to wish you a happy birthday, but if you're just going to be mean then I take it back. _

_I turned eleven a few days ago; we had a big party and lots of my friends from school came. My mother made a cake; father had to work late so he didn't make it home in time (he has a very important job- he's a politician, did you know that?), but the next morning he gave me a present and we sat out in the living room with some hot chocolate he made until I had to go to school. _

_Anyway…I suppose I hope you didn't have a horrible birthday. If you're nicer to the kids at this orphanage than you were to us, maybe they'll even get you something nice._

_I apologize for my last closing statement it was immature of me,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_Thank you for the birthday present. I didn't…I really didn't expect something like that from you._

_I'm sorry I said you were a jerk. You _are_ of course, sometimes…but I forgot that sometimes you used to be nice as well. _

_Do you remember when we were playing hide and seek that one time, and I wandered into one of the orchards nearby, and some old man came stomping out with a shotgun screaming about intruders, and you grabbed my arm and pulled me into some bushes where he couldn't see us? _

_You used to do things like that sometimes. Of course, you also pantsed Zell on numerous occasions, and hit Squall because he didn't want to be on your team, and buried Irvine in the sand and left him there all day, until Matron found him and dug him out, and put worms and frogs and those little fish from the tide pools in our beds…_

_You didn't do very many nice things, actually. _

_I liked you sometimes, though, you know. You used to make me laugh._

_Anyway, I have your present sitting on my windowsill, where I can see it before I go to bed. When the sun goes down, it shines right through it, and it's very pretty. Did you get it somewhere in town?_

_Sincerely,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_I MADE it. You can't buy anything that good in this stupid crappy town. We have a woodshop class and Mr. Greer showed me how to make the little people and the base, and he found me some glass, and I stayed after school so he could show me how to make the dome. He said I have a natural 'nack'. I don't know what that is, but basically it means I'm really good, just like I keep telling you. _

_The snowflakes are plastic, but you hafta get this special kind of plastic cause regular plastic doesn't work and it's boring looking (it's supposed to be twinkly looking like snow) so I went down to this shop on Main, and they had a buncha really girly crap in there like paints and drawing sets and stuff, but it was the only place to go to find the right kinda' plastic, so I hope you're HAPPY. Some guys from school saw me while I was inside and called me gay but I beat them up anyway so it was fine. There were three of them, and they were bigger than me, and I beat all of 'em up without breaking a sweat. _

_Wanna hear a joke?_

_This airplane is about to crash, so this lady jumps up and yells "If I'm about to die I want to die feeling like a woman." So she takes off all her clothes and looks around the airplane and asks if any of the guys are man enough to make her feel like a real woman. This guy stands up and takes off his shirt and says "Here, iron this!"_

_Talk to you later,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_It's 'knack'._

_Knack, noun: _

_1. A clever, expedient way of doing something_

_2. A specific talent for something, especially one difficult to explain or teach. _

_And that joke is _sexist_, Seifer. Fifty years ago, that joke might have been funny, if you were telling it to a bunch of PIGS. There is something called 'equal opportunity' now which means that YOU should get off the couch and make ME a sandwich._

_You JERK,_

_Quisty_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE TO MAKE YOU A SANDWICH WHY DON'T YOU MAKE YOUR OWN SANDWICH YOUR STUPID LAZY PIECE OF CRAP! _

_YOU'RE a jerk,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_I only meant that for years women have been pushed into roles and now we don't have to be limited in such a way. A woman's place used to be in the kitchen, making dinner for her husband, but now we can be anything we want; now the man can be the one in the kitchen, because society doesn't place the same restraints on women that it used to. Haven't they gone over women's rights in your history class yet?_

_Sincerely,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_Baking's for GIRLS. Why should guys be in the kitchen? If I get married, even though I'm not gonna cause who wants some dumb girl around all the time, I'm not gonna do stupid stuff like baking. That's girly. I'm gonna go kill monsters and rescue princesses. And when I get home, my wife better have dinner on the table._

_Women's rights are for retards,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_Oh, you are such a _pig_. I hope your new mother feeds you only brussel sprouts and that you NEVER get cake, not even for your birthday._

_Stop writing me I'm not going to reply to you anymore,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_Wanna hear another joke?_

_Why don't women know how to ski? Because it doesn't snow between the kitchen and the bedroom._

_Men are better,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_YOU'RE NOT EVEN IGNORANT; YOU'RE JUST DOING THIS ON PURPOSE TO ANGER ME. KNOCK IT OFF._

_Girls can legally own weapons,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_How many men does it take to get a beer out of the fridge?_

_None. That's a woman's job._

_Girls can legally own weapons but only men know anything about them so who cares,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_You are a PIG and I hope tomorrow at school a girl half your size beats you up and takes your lunch money because that's what you DESERVE. Why I ever thought you could be nice sometimes or that you had a nice smile or that sometimes you were funny I don't know and I see why Matron got rid of you; I would have too, if I were her._

_Good-BYE,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_Why don't you take the stick out of your stupid ass THEY WERE JUST JOKES I WAS JUST KIDDING OK QUISTY AND HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT IF MATRON JUST SHIPPED YOU OFF EVEN THOUGH NO ONE WANTED TO ADOPT YOU. The lady from the orphanage didn't WANT me, ok? Matron just got tired of me and this lady said she'd take me because she was an old friend of Matron's and she wanted to help her out and I DIDN'T GET SOME NICE STUPID FAMILY LIKE YOU DID SO YOU CAN JUST STOP ACTING LIKE YOU'RE SO MUCH BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE._

_Screw you,_

_Seifer_

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_I'm sorry for what I said in my last letter. _

_I knew about Matron giving you away, about the lady at the new orphanage not adopting you. I don't know why she gave you away, Seifer; she just told me that she and Cid couldn't take care of you anymore._

_I don't think it had anything to do with you, though. She was really upset when I talked to her. I don't think she wanted to let you go. _

_You were…you were her favorite. I used to get jealous, because I could tell that even though she loved all of us, she loved you just a little bit more. I'm not just saying that to make you feel better- I really think she did. I never used to understand, because you were always so much more trouble than the rest of us, but maybe that's why she liked you, because you were a challenge, or something. _

_I don't…I don't have a nice family either, you know. They don't even want me. I think they just got me because it's good for their image. My father is high up in government, and he's always running campaigns, and he does everything according to what _looks good_, you know? I lied about my birthday; there was no party. None of the kids from school like me very much either, maybe because…maybe because I _am _bossy. You're right. I suppose no one likes someone who tries to tell them what to do all the time. _

_Sending all these letters back and forth, it makes me…it makes me really lonely sometimes. I know you can be mean, and you used to make me so mad all the time, but I wish you were here. _

_I didn't hate you all the time, you know. I mean that. _

_Seifer, I really am sorry for what I said. Please keep writing? You're…you're the only person I really talk to, you know._

_Sincerely,_

_Quistis_

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_The kids at your school and your new parents are stupid._

I _like you. _

_Sincerely,_

_Seifer_


	12. Chapter Six

**A/N: So my weekends have been pretty busy for the last couple of weeks and probably will continue to be so for the next few. Since this is generally when I do my editing (most of my active writing time occurs on weekdays after work, so I usually don't have time to go over a new chapter on top of all that) updates will probably remain a little farther apart. I think I've been getting in, what, two a month? Which still isn't bad, considering the fact that I work full time, have WAY too many damn hobbies, and am in possession of a boyfriend who does want me to occasionally pay attention to him.**

**I'm considering taking a posting hiatus just as I did while writing Witch, just so I can stockpile even more chapters and really stay on top of this thing, but I haven't decided yet. It would only be a month, maybe two, but let me at least throw another couple of updates at you guys and I'll see whether I want to do the hiatus.**

**Thank you as always for your favorites and your reviews; I really appreciate you guys. Also, while you may feel free to criticize them, do NOT ask me where the Selphie sections come from. I'm convinced I have some kind of pill-popping alter ego which manifests as her perspective. My brain is such a strange, ugly place.**

* * *

**Chapter Six**

Timber Hotel

Timber

"Yes, sir. We did- they got away. We are stationed at the Timber Hotel at the moment. Several casualties among the soldiers, and SeeD Dincht was badly wounded in action. He's been stabilized. I administered emergency field assistance and one of the soldiers has advanced medical training; he's gotten several potions in him and is monitoring him closely. I believe he'll be all right overnight, until he can be transported out."

"We can have a team there in the morning to retrieve him."

"Yes, sir. I understand."

She is only half-devoted to this conversation that spits its white-noise static into her ear.

There are so many pieces breaking off and tearing themselves free and tumbling about inside of her that she is not even sure which to concentrate on first.

Hot white noon over wheat-gold dunes that stretch on forever and a man's voice in her ear and a still yellow bulge at her feet, awkwardly twisted-

Seifer watches her from beside Zell's soundly sleeping form, stretched out across the floor, and this too pulls her away from her report, shoots her back out among those wheat-gold dunes beneath nuclear white sun: what is she remembering and why has she never recalled it before- what is this supposed to _mean_-

Martine curtly orders her to report back to him in the morning and hangs up, and for a moment she can only stand, listening to the shrill morse code dial tone, her voice a hot hard lump in her throat.

Seifer scrapes his feet up underneath him.

Beside him, Irvine sleeps with his back to the front desk, hat pulled low, rifle across his knees, and just across from him is Squall, perched on the lowest step of the staircase, his own weapon across his knees, polishing rag in hand, and for once this does not tug at something inside of her; for once she does not want to sit herself down beside him, mold his mouth into a smile with a witty quip or a shy little touch on his knee.

But she certainly doesn't want to speak with Seifer either- she needs time to figure this out, to unravel all these snarled little splinters and put them back in the right order-

She ducks behind the staircase, slips away into the little room off to the side lobby, pulls the door shut beside her. There is a low leather chair in the corner and a polished walnut-wood shelf just behind it, jutting free a few weathered spines of books that have seen better days.

She sinks slowly into this low leather chair, lets herself be engulfed, taken down.

She shuts her eyes.

These are the pieces she can carefully pick free of the tangled mess inside her: A bird; a dune; Seifer's voice.

Seifer's voice, not quite as it is now, just a little less deep, his hand -his _hand_; there's another piece- a little less scarred-

He is younger.

There is…a bird lying between them, a soft little ball of yellow down-

A bird and a voice and a hand- what does that _mean_-

_-here come on get up stop acting so tough trepe i already caught you crying ok so just take it i _know _it's not the same but take it maybe you can hide it and they won't find it how the fuck should i know what you're supposed to do with it in your dorm room you're the one who's acting all butt hurt over it-_

A bird. A dune. Seifer's voice.

A bird. A dune. Seifer's voice.

A bird. A dune-

_-you're not supposed to be here we're both gonna' get in trouble seifer-_

_-who gives a crap even if they fail you on this they're not gonna kick you out quistis you've got the best grades out of anyone in the class-_

_-i didn't want to hurt him-_

_ -yeah yeah i know ya big crybaby look here's mine he likes you already for some reason take him ok i'll just tell em i lost him in a sandstorm or something-_

Hot sand underneath her and his smile that is just a little deeper on one side-

Sizzling acid tears on her cheeks-

A bird-

_-you look like shit you've got sand all over your face and stuff stop crying it's just making it worse geez trepe- _

_ He steps carefully over the broken mangled heap of Ishmail the Chocobo, wipes her face roughly with his hand, and she thinks about how soft his face looks sometimes, when he thinks no one is watching. Out here in the sun his smile is just a little brighter, just a little nicer, but she hasn't seen anyone in a month, of course, and it's probably just her imagination- she is probably just starved for human companionship, and she is certainly only imagining the little lightning zip that sings itself across her knee and up her thigh, where he slides his hand as he leans forward to wipe his fingers brusquely across her cheeks once more-_

She screws her eyelids down tighter, digs her fingers into the tops of her thighs-

_-hey hey _hey _trepe knock it off i hate that kind of shit-_

_ -don't tell them i cried ok please seifer if you tell them i'll turn you in for abandoning your post-_

_ -tch like i care what the fuck are they going to do to me anyway-_

_ -you'll fail the test-_

_ -they're always giving us these stupid tests they're not even the _important _ones the important one is the seed exam and i'm gonna pass that one my first time no problem you watch-_

The door rasps open and jolts her from this hot mid-noon desert and that dead bird at her feet, and she flicks both eyes open to watch Seifer step frowning into the room, brushing the door shut behind him. "Hey. What did Martine say? Are they getting someone out here to take Wuss?"

She rubs her temples, blows out a breath she does not even remember taking, watches the pale white stars of all her scars pull themselves tight across her knuckles. "He'll be all right for now, Seifer. He's stable. Seargent Adley is keeping an eye on him; he's very capable. Martine's going to have a team out here in the morning to take him back to Garden."

His eyes tighten subtly at the corners and he looks away, rubbing the back of his neck.

She works herself slowly out of the chair, listens to it give her up reluctantly, like quicksand grudgingly letting go. "I promise he'll be ok."

He smiles unpleasantly. "If he isn't, I'll just punch Martine in the crotch until he throws up. I mean, sure, most people would say that's not really enough, not in exchange for a life, but I'd get a fuck ton of enjoyment out of it. Wuss would want me to happy. Actually, usually he just wants me to rot in hell and for my 'penis to get sick and fall off and die', fuckwit, but I'd like to think he'd approve of Martine getting cock socked."

She crosses her arms and feels a little twitch of a smile crawl up the right corner of her mouth. "I imagine that would probably get you tossed out of Garden."

He waves this notion dismissively away. "They're not going to throw me out. I don't care what that dickhole says. I'm the best gunbladist they've seen in fucking decades."

"And your modesty, of course, is second to none. That's an attribute Garden certainly can't afford to lose."

He smiles at her.

If he just wouldn't try to _intimidate _all the time- she likes the way he looks in this room, in the smudgy gray light coming in through the window over the chair. This open smiling face tells her of another Seifer, a boy who proffered a pale lemon ball on his hand, let it unroll with a little excited _meep _to stretch its beak tentatively out to graze her nose-

She blinks.

"Trepe? You in there?" He clicks his fingers.

_-here trepe-_

_ -i can't take him-_

_ -sure you can i just gave him to you it's a real bitch move to re-gift someone with their own present you know-_

_ -garden won't allow-_

_ -fuck garden who cares what _garden _allows-_

A shrill little whistle brings her back to herself, to a small little gray-lit room. "You going senile or something?"

"It's nothing. I just-"

She just cannot stop seeing a bird and a dune and a hand, sliding itself tentatively up her knee and onto her thigh.

"Zell's going to be all right," she says abruptly, brushing a loose strand of hair self-consciously behind one ear.

"You said that already."

"I know. I just- earlier- you...well, I just wanted to make sure you were...reassured."

"He owes me money. I'm not going to let him keel over until he fucking coughs it up."

She smiles. "You've known him a long time, haven't you?"

"Since we were kids."

* * *

Not that Wuss remembers.

Not that he can ever recall how one day they ran into each other down on the docks, how Zell punched him in the junk and he threw the idiot in the ocean, how after that they fell into this natural sort of rhythm, fighting and forgiving and running rampant through the streets of Balamb.

The children at that new orphanage were a lot like those from the old one: loud, annoying, and completely inferior to him.

They didn't like him much either.

Wuss was probably the first out of any of them he could ever really call a friend. He doesn't know if the guy was lonely, if he picked up on Seifer's loneliness and decided to take him home like the stray fucking puppy he was, but that day down on the docks they put their marks on each other, threw their fists and their words and bit deep into skin still just a little doughy with childhood, scratched and kicked and butted heads until there was nothing else to do but lie there drying off on the warm sun-scorched wood, not saying anything.

He remembers everything about that day.

Wuss' chest pumped up and down and Seifer's hand flopped like a cold dying fish on that sun-scorched wood between them, and he wanted to cry because that was the fucking closest he had come in _so long _to that old house by the beach, to Matron and Quistis and even that fuckhead Squall, and he just missed them so _fucking _much.

He took three long steadying breaths.

He wiped the salt from his eyes and the blood from his nose, and then all of a sudden Wuss rolled over and sat up and said his Ma was making macaroni and cheese for dinner that night, and did Seifer want to come home with him to stay the night?

Ma Dincht hugged him like a son and Wuss showed him the collection of swords he'd inherited from a grandfather he never knew and for two years, Seifer sprinted like hell to reach the docks every night after school and it didn't matter if the new kids hated him, if his new matron never had any time for him, he had Zell and Zell had him, and the best thing that ever happened to him was this one summer night when one of the fishermen caught them sneaking off with that day's catch, and when the asshole lifted him up onto his toes by the collar, Zell screamed, "Hey, don't touch him! That's my brother!"

That was just before Wuss got accepted into Garden. He was going so he could be a hero like his grandpa, he told Seifer, and Seifer should come too, so they could both be heroes, so Ma wouldn't have to worry about either of them, so they could watch out for each other and protect one another from girls and important stuff like that.

And he thought about it.

He thought so fucking _hard_ about it, about letting this dumb fucking kid with hair sharp enough to poke your goddamned eye out walk off into a future without him; every fucking nighthe sat down at an empty kitchen table with that admissions form spread out before him, and he broke a tiny little nub of a pencil into even smaller shards, and he wondered how much time new cadets had left for writing letters, if Garden even let them, if Quistis Trepe would find someone else to listen to all her secrets and her wishes and her funny little stories.

And then it was too late, Wuss was gone and his form was still empty, and a year later when he stepped through Garden's doors for the first time, the asshole passed his eyes right over him and waved to someone over his shoulder, and something clawed its way up out of his stomach into his throat and he wanted to know fucking _why_.

He still didn't understand when Quistis did the same thing to him, when she slid her eyes right on past his head to someone else- how could they _forget _him- _him_, Seifer _fucking _Almasy-

It still stings. You hold onto something so tight and it just lets you go, cuts you loose, and you will never know the way that fucking _razes _a man inside until you have clung to something that does not cling back.

He slips his hands into his pockets.

She smiles at him in the gray stormlight that leaks through the windows and steady pressure with his eyes falters that smile just slightly, fades it back into her cheeks, and now she laces both her hands in front of her and slides her eyes nervously away.

The rain ticks against the window.

He remembers a clock and a mother and paper snowfall and there is suddenly all this rubber in his limbs, water in his knees, and now a frown unwinds itself across her mouth and she takes a step forward, hesitantly, like he is fucking glass and she will break him with a touch-

"Are you ok?"

She stops, tilts her head slowly around toward the door.

Something has pulled her attention beyond him.

Don't _fucking open that door_- he doesn't know why but please _don't _please _please _Trepe just get the fuck away from it-

* * *

There is not enough noise.

When she shut herself carefully away inside this little sanctuary there were a thousand little slivers of sound all folding and refolding themselves into a whole, into one endless ocean of noise that crashed itself down and down and down against the door, muffled but never silenced.

There are wounded men beyond this door, braying their animal pain, being soothed away into sleep, drowning in those warm dark places they have been soothed down into.

Death is not silent.

The room beyond the door is silent.

She cracks it open carefully, peeks her head around the corner, and all across the hotel lobby are strewn these dying men and their faithful watchers, their brothers and friends and platoon mates who will not let them go alone, who guard them all the way down into these warm dark places from which they will not surface, and they are all, each and every one of them, so _still_.

They are folded into pleated accordions of boneless meat, watcher and watched alike, Irvine slumped over onto Zell and Selphie prone at his feet, and Squall-

Oh Hyne, please _please are they dead don't tell her_-

His cinderblock voice sketches itself across her neck and his arms loop themselves around her waist to click the door quietly shut beneath her white, white fingers, but not before she _sees_.

In the room beyond there is a woman.

Her red-blood mouth tips itself up at the corners and her eyes like yellow dunes beneath even more yellow noon grow fractures through the parchment skin around them and Quistis' stomach slaps itself down between her boots and Seifer hisses, "Get to the window," in her ear, and she does not understand anything, except that she can't fight, her limbs are all wooden doll sockets and sticks, coming unglued-

He picks her up by the waist.

He drags her behind him like this, until her feet begin to scrabble around beneath her once more, until these useless newborn legs spasm and twitch and plant her boots solidly on the floor once more, and now cold rain stings itself across her cheeks and tangles its wet fingers in her neatly-pinned updo and his rough gravel order shoots her toward the sill beyond the chair, and he is _scared_; she can hear it in his voice; he is _never _scared, not outnumbered four to one, not staring Headmaster Martine down across his desk with his latest transgression in permanent-ink red on a folder between them-

He shoves her out into the cold gray morning.

The rain fills her mouth and dumps her soggy wheat-rope hair down her back and she turns to watch him force his broad shoulders through the window, twist himself beyond the frame, and the machinegun storm roars in her ears and punches its wasp rain stinging into her skin, and where do they _go_- what does she _do_-

He takes her arm in his hand.

"_Run_."

* * *

Fuck this stupid town _fuck _its shut-tight doors and its closed-down shops and its trains cancelled because of a little fucking _rain_-

He runs until his lungs suck themselves dry and shrivel up in his chest and he keeps running even beyond that, pushing, pushing, fucking pushing- go faster harder _farther_-

Do not stop do not stop do not _stop do not ever fucking stop_-

* * *

"There was an old lady who swallowed a fly I don't know why she swallowed a fly perhaps she'll die."

The fire engine trees red red so _red_ in the fall but winter is coming to frost them like cakes and bye bye bye red so _so _red bye-bye to you.

"There was an old lady who swallowed a spider that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her she swallowed the spider to catch the fly I don't know why she swallowed the fly perhaps she'll die."

Look at the trees the red red _red _trees!

The boy is here, she tells the lady who looks at trees, who remembers oceans, who will not _shut up_-

"The worms crawl in the worms crawl out."

The boy is here.

"A big green worm with rolling eyes crawls in your stomach and out your eyes your stomach turns a slimy green and pus pours out like whipping cream."

The whipping cream on the cookies and the worms in the bed, the boy put the worms in the bed and the cookies in his mouth his mouth his mouth his mouth he had a pretty mouth but the monsters in the graveyard they ate him down to dust and bones and the worms went in the worms went out-

The boy.

"Rain rain go away come again some other day the worms come out when it rains the worms went in the worms went out."

The _boy_.

"Beware the stare of Mary Shaw she had no children only her dolls if you see her in your dreams be sure you never ever scream or she'll rip your tongue out at the seam."

The rain the rain the rain the boy liked the rain it made the ocean big she swam him in it one day until he screamed.

"Mary Anne Cotton she's dead and she's rotten lying in bed with her eyes wide open sing sing oh what should I sing Mary Anne Cotton is tied up in string where where she's up in the air and now they're selling puddings for a penny a pair."

"Be quiet."

The steam engine rain hisses in the streets and the thunders sounds its dragon call in the sky and her feet are very wet and the boy is somewhere ahead of her and the lady who looks at trees, who remembers oceans, who will not _shut up_, says nothing.

She smiles.

She taps her quiet raindrop footsteps away down the sidewalk.

Do you know this one?

"Hing, hang, hung, look what the hangman done; hung, hang, hing, see the robber swing."

* * *

She can't…run…her doll's limbs…everything has pulled itself apart into rubber shreds…_please_-

"Do not make…a fucking…sound," he wheezes into her ear, and she sees a flash of red brick, is whirled past this flash into soggy piles of trash and ankle-deep water that burns where it laps up over her toes onto her black mirror boots-

She hasn't…she hasn't stopped being _afraid _-will she ever stop- _why can't _she stop-

He leans into her, holds himself propped up on both knees, his sides sucking in, in, and she tips herself right back into him, rests her weight so heavily on him she is not sure who is holding who up anymore, but it's all right, the rain is cold and he is warm, and she is still not done being frightened, imagine, a grown woman like her, a _soldier_, and what is she afraid of exactly- a woman who walks through rain, who talks in poetry-

A shiver walks its ice-water fingers up her spine and now this ice-water shiver pours itself down over her shoulders and seeps its cold rime inside her chest to touch her heart-

"Seifer-"

"_Shhh_-"

He freezes.

"Here's the little piggy, see his snout, slit him open, guts fall out."

He pulls her down behind the dumpster at the very back of the alley, kneels beside her with his hands clasped tightly between his knees.

She listens to the footsteps tap tap tap past, digs her nails into his thigh, feels him slip his hand beneath her own, loosen it finger by finger by finger-

Please please please oh Hyne _please_-

* * *

Keep going keep going keep going keep going just keep fucking _walking_-

"There once was a boy by the sea, who paid a terrible fee. He fought like a knight, with all of his might, and came home to his bride, swept out by the tide. "Give us a kiss," she said in a worm-bloated tone, and then she ate him all up, from shin to jawbone."'

Quistis twitches beside him.

He presses his face to the side of her own, mouths a silent _shhh _against her cheek, listens to his fucking war-drum heart, louder than the rain, and she isn't going to stop, she knows he's _here _she _always _knew-

Please please fuck _please _do not let her leave him behind again; do not let her take until he has nothing left, do not let her leave him all _alone_, _please_.

"Come out come out wherever you are, boy."

Quistis curls her hands into the collar of his shirt.

"Quiet; _quiet_," he mouths soundlessly against her cheek; fucking _listen _to him, Trepe, _please_, goddammit-

He exhales so fucking softly he doesn't even feel it pass his lips.

The rain whispers in the alley.

She slips her hand into his.

* * *

His fingers are cold, and wet, and they grip hers back too tightly, press down to the bone, but they ground her: they give her an anchor, a way back from this sweaty noose fear squeezing her down smaller and smaller and smaller.

Running has stretched her muscles like taffy, and pulled them apart into string.

She cannot move.

The rain tattoos her arms and stings in her eyes and he grips her hand tighter, harder, closer, and still she cannot move.

Beside her, he is just as still. She can feel his sandpaper cheek on her own and the soft butterfly winging of his breath against the corner of her mouth, he is that close, and beyond them this woman with the yellow furnace eyes pauses her tap tap tapping raindrop footsteps-

Lightning impales the sky on its white fire and the woman calls out again, and how Quistis can even _hear _her over the storm she cannot begin to hazard a guess-

"Boy, mommy's here. Remember her, boy? You remember her, don't you? She says you were one of the only ones who really loved her, who never forgot her. She misses you, boy. She wants to talk to you."

He is snapped taut, pulled upright until any little give is ironed out of his warm body.

She watches him shut his eyes, so _tight_, like he is a child and this woman a monster and if he just can't _see _it it cannot see him; he can hide away in plain sight and the things that slither from beneath closet doors will slink right on by him, never any the wiser.

If she remembered her childhood at all, she would probably recall a sensation like this, this wanting to believe, this stubborn childlike irrationality; the instinct is here, after all, somewhere down deep, submerged beneath whatever it is that asphyxiates all her memories from before Garden.

It is partially unearthed by this voice.

It is reeled up from the depths to emerge squirming into the light, and she feels her fingers twitch inside his own, feels his twitch back even harder-

"Seifer?"

It is a child's soprano cry, and he strains toward it.

"Seifer? She's…she's hurting me. _Please_, could you-"

He flips his eyes open.

He lifts halfway up out of his crouch and she yanks him back down, pulls sharply enough on his hand to sit him down hard in the rain-soaked garbage strewn out around them.

Discarded cigarette packs rustle like leaves beneath his boots and she sucks in her breath, holds it pressed down so _tight _in her lungs- please please Hyne don't let her have heard- please please _please_-

* * *

"Seifer? Seifer, _please_-"

He has always known all along that this thing who is not his mother, who wears his mother's face, is just a mask; that his mother, his _real_ mother, is trapped away behind it; that it is up to him to save her.

He fucking _knew this _when that letter opener punched itself like a knife through his father's eye, when he crouched like a goddamned little coward in the corner and did nothing.

He didn't step in to stop it, because he didn't want to hurt her.

Yeah, he was fucking frozen like that little bitch Wuss getting his first glimpse of tit; he couldn't move; he fucking _admits that_, but if fear had somehow unglued his hands from the arms of that chair and unlocked his frozen marionette legs and pushed him up onto his feet, what could he have goddamned _done_?

It _has _to be her.

It _is_ her and she came back for him after all, she _wanted _him after all, and whatever the fuck is going on- if she's under some kind of spell or she's gone around the bend from caring for him for too many years- they can _fix _it; they can figure it out, all three of them, and with Quistis fucking Trepe on their side they _have _to _find something_-

If something is wrong with her, then she didn't give him away to some dumb old hag who never could pronounce his fucking name right just _because_. She loved him and she wanted to keep him and then something happened, and it wasn't his fault, it wasn't the way he forgot to not take shortcuts through her garden or how he used to pull Selphie's dolls apart just to make her mad, it wasn't _any _of that- she loved him _anyway_, right?

_Right_?

He blinks into the rain.

Quistis keeps one hand in his, the other on his arm, her eyes on his face, and one experimental tug tightens that hand on his arm and pulls Quistis just slightly off-balance, tipping her over toward him.

"Seifer? Seifer, _please_. Please just-"

"Don't you hear her, boy? I know you're out there. She needs you. Are you just going to abandon mommy? Just like that? After everything she did for you, boy?"

Quistis shakes her head.

She shifts herself around him, crouch-walks carefully, silently through the trash beneath their feet to lower herself onto both knees in front of him, that pale little hand still in his, and he shuts his eyes again, feels that goddamned _voice _crawl up his spine and onto his neck-

"Seifer?"

"Listen to her, boy. Listen to what you've _done _to her."

* * *

Some battles are fought in blood and light and sound, with guns and knives and bombs that fracture apart into green metal stars.

This one is silent.

The first time Garden told her that he was lost, that she should not fight for him, she left him behind to die alone beneath a twisted steel skeleton, to choke on hot grenade powder in the dark until his lungs clogged up and his heart wound down and his eyes slid shut. She ran away with her heart in her mouth and she told herself it didn't matter, it was only _Seifer Almasy_, he'd have done the same, she shouldn't feel ashamed.

But he had fought beside her for eight years. He had always been around, mostly when she did not want him, sometimes when she did, and he loved his friends and he whispered foul jokes to her in class when he was supposed to be studying, and she'd never wanted him to _die_, you see.

It was always about the orders.

She needed their stability more than she needed him.

But ten minutes later she pulled a shot and this time when she ran away she aimed herself back toward him, and maybe it was just something _about _him that rubbed off on others, that made her step out of line, and maybe it is this certain something that now makes her takes his hands, squeeze them tightly, set them gently down across his knees.

He opens his eyes.

"Seifer? Seifer would you please help me? Help me, please. Please please _please she's hurting me it hurts so much Seifer please_-"

Sometime far away in a past she cannot remember, this man sat beside her on a hot desert dune and smiled at her because she was sad, and maybe there are still too many missing pieces, but this she remembers, and this she will never forget again.

She presses his hands between her fingers and she wages this silent battle with her eyes and her hands and tiny encouraging nods of her head, when his hunched shoulders relax just slightly, when he leans forward toward her instead of the open alleyway behind them-

* * *

Trepe's hands are wrinkled leather in the rain.

He runs his thumbs across their lines, carefully traces the little white slashes of scars that sit in rippled humps above her skin, and she smiles so _fucking _kindly he can almost forget what is waiting for him beyond.

He breathes.

In, out, motherfucker.

Concentrate on how goddamned blue her eyes are. The way her left eyebrow kicks out just a little bit at the end, one single hair that will not fall into place.

It must drive her fucking nuts.

"Seifer?"

"Boy, are you listening? Do you _hear_? I am hurting her, you know. Are you just going to sit out there, doing nothing?"

He smoothes the wayward hair.

She smiles.

She inclines her head just slightly, squeezes his hand, reaches up to hold the one he leaves pressed against her eyebrow.

"Seifer?"

He jerks. This voice is a hot wire shoved down through his goddamned _skin_, and he can't not _move_- he can't just _sit here_-

But she pumps his hand again and she nods her head and her eyes are blue, so fucking _fucking _blue- focus, asshole: her eyes, her smile, her soft white skin beneath his fingers-

"_Good_," she mouths.

She's going to make one hell of a teacher. She's got the kind of patience he's never even tried to cultivate, and name something with a dick that wouldn't skewer himself through his own spleen for one of those smiles.

Squall doesn't count.

He goes on tracing her scars, eyes shut, and he remembers what her hands used to feel like, before Garden got a hold of her, before she stopped writing letters and rescuing kittens from plastic bags on street corners and telling lies to weepy little ten-year-old boys who tried so fucking hard to pretend they didn't need a place to belong and a family to welcome them in.

The rain beats its drum rhythm on the pavement and irons her hair down her shoulders and for a long long fucking time they just kneel here like this, linked at the hands, shivering, breathing white-cotton exhales into the rain, waiting.

* * *

The rain shrivels their hands into pale centenarian prunes, and still they wait.

* * *

The boy the boy the boy-

Shut up shut up shut up shut up _shut up_-

The boy the boy the worms went in the worms went out but the boy he didn't he didn't-

She shuts her eyes.

The rain sings itself off her Shell, slaps itself echoing down on the sidewalk.

Maybe I should take the girl instead.

Oh no don't do that don't do that she didn't do anything-

I'll take her and I'll boil all the magic in her veins until she screams and then I'll _fuck _her with one of those pretty young soldiers back there. I'll fuck her until she bleeds and squirms and dies, and I'll make the boy watch.

What do you think of that?

…

I asked you _what do you think of that_?

The rain pockmarks the puddles all around her, fails its blind silver hammers across awning and roof and flower pot.

She smiles.

I thought so.

* * *

They wait so long his ass goes numb.

His hands bleed themselves dry of all sensation, which is a fucking shame, because she is still holding them.

Her voice is a dry sandpaper hiss, when she speaks at last.

"I haven't heard anything in a while. I think she may be gone." She shakes her hair down her shoulders, releases one of his hands to flick it back out of her eyes. "I'll go look. You wait here."

She is still just as goddamned bossy as the day she pushed him down in a shallow tide pool on the beach and told him to _wait there _while she went and got Matron.

He stood right up and pushed her back, of course, and insisted he hadn't done anything wrong, that he shouldn't be punished just because sissy little Squall just happened to cry at the same moment Seifer's fist came into contact with his nose -a sure coincidence- that if she wanted him to just sit there and wait then she was going to have to _make him_.

Her face turned red and that pale little fist cocked back and he never did admit it but that punch fucking _hurt_, and it was probably the very beginning of the fall he took twelve years ago and has never quite recovered from.

He always did like a woman with a pair.

"_Don't_," he hisses, catching her hand as she carefully stands up, kneading the cramps from her legs.

"Seifer, someone has to-"

"We'll both go."

She folds her arms over her chest and glares at him.

"What are you going to do, Trepe?" he asks, leaning in close, bending down until they are eye to eye. "Huh? Gonna' dick kick me if I don't do what you say?"

"That's one option."

He is halfway through his rejoinder when she hits him with a Blind that burns the shit out of his eyes, and he staggers back with a muffled expletive, feeling for the wall behind him, and now he hears her boots click quietly away down the alley.

"_Fuck_." He swipes at his eyes, and this fumbling intensifies the pain even more, if that's even goddamned possible. He drops down into a crouch and presses the heels of his hands hard into his sockets, like working them back and forth will milk the fuckers dry, squeeze the burning right out, and he's going to fucking _kill _the bitch, if this creepy Matron doppelganger hasn't already taken her goddamned head off.

"Clear," she says casually right beside him.

Fuck shit _Hyne _is she a goddamned _cat_- he didn't even hear her coming back.

"Would you mind getting this shit out of my eyes, then?" he snarls.

"Don't be a baby," she says quietly, touching him lightly just above the bridge of his nose. "Blind doesn't inflict any permanent damage; I wouldn't have cast it if it did."

Something warm flares across his lids and now she pulls her hand back and he tentatively blinks both eyes open, squinting through the rain.

"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "But I didn't think it was a good idea for you to come with me."

"You sure she's gone?"

She pushes her glasses up her nose and looks up at him through the rain. "I doubt I would have come back, if she wasn't." She hesitates, looks away, presses her lips together into a thin white line. "Are you all right?"

Is he all right.

Is he all goddamned _right_.

When he smirks, it hurts.

Hell, everything fucking hurts right now. He feels so goddamned _raw_, beat-up, like Zell has just worked him over for a solid hour in the Training Center.

But you know, if he doesn't smirk, who the fuck knows what might come leaking out.

* * *

She has never been more afraid of stepping through a door.

When they fled down Timber's streets there was only the wardrum pounding of rain and cannon blasts of thunder shaking the puddles beneath their feet apart into splinters.

Her stretch-Taffy muscles, eaten away by acid.

The woman who talked in rhymes and riddles, who knew Seifer's name, who held her trapped and crouched and frightened like a small child in a dirty dead-end alleyway.

But now the woman is gone and her muscles have knit themselves back together, and maybe the rain and the cannon blasts of thunder going off like war raging above her head are still here, are still happening, but her head is full of a different kind of roaring now, and she does not hear them.

The worst kind of noise is never the cannon blasts or the chiming of brass ejected from chambers, but the silence that comes after these, that settles like dust over a battlefield. The chiming brass and the cannon blasts are focal points, things to fight and a direction to run, and if they are not particularly pleasant, at least they are something.

At least they are not nothing.

She left behind a hotel full of dolls, crumpled and folded and awkwardly slumped, and they are positioned just exactly the same when she returns, Irvine flung out across Zell and Selphie stretched out at his feet and Squall dangling stringless from the stairs, Lionheart three steps down.

Seifer stands beside her in the silence, hands in his pockets, face drawn.

She thinks about reaching out for him, propping herself upright on his arm, letting her take all his weight, but this is not fair, and this was not the way she was taught, and so she keeps her hands by her sides and her eyes straight ahead, and she pretends she does not hear him suck in a breath like a hiccup, his shoulder twitching where it touches hers.

She saw a room like this once before.

There was a boy who junctioned a Guardian Force, who couldn't handle the strain.

It happens sometimes. Some cannot manage the initial joining, and bring instructors running with their shrill cries of pain, their frantic tearing at their skulls; most are calmed easily, the GF carefully suctioned free by a well-trained SeeD, the junctioning attempted again another day, once the cadet has been monitored closely and pushed harder and deemed ready.

But this boy did not wait for an instructor; he did not cry out in pain or uproot his hair or huddle sobbing in the corner, waiting to be saved.

He killed his brother.

He raped the pigtailed cadet who for years had trailed after him like a puppy, waiting to be noticed.

Garden left him alone too soon after his first junctioning and the GF snapped something inside of his brain, fried that which made him human, and when Quistis stepped into the Training Center to retrieve a book she had forgotten, this was what she walked into, this sea of bodies, this motionless jumble of puppets without masters.

The boy charged her with training blade in hand, and she put him down like a dog, one shot between the eyes.

The pigtailed cadet lived just long enough to watch him die.

An unfortunate training accident, Garden told those who had not seen, and swept it all under the rug.

But she saw, and to this day she remembers the precise shade of the blood on the floor, and the pigtailed cadet's underwear in shreds around her ankles, and how very, very _old _Martine looked as he took her report.

She does not want to touch these men and women as she touched those in the Training Center that afternoon, with just the very tips of her fingers, hoping for a pulse, praying for a beat, but beside her Seifer can only stand frozen and pale, staring down at his friends, and she unlocks her knees and uncurls her fingers and begins to move among them, barely breathing.

She checks Zell first, feels something give and come crashing down inside her chest as she fingers the steady hummingbird buzz of his heart in his wrist, moves on to Irvine, to Selphie, to Squall.

"They're ok," she calls over her shoulder.

She hears his boots shift on the carpet.

She moves on from soldier to soldier to soldier, checking them carefully, and when she finishes at last he still has not said a word.

"They're all alive. She cast a very strong form of Sleep on them. I haven't seen anything like it before; I didn't even know it was _possible _to affect this many people at once."

He says nothing.

She looks up. "Seifer?"

"They're ok?" he asks roughly, nodding toward Zell and Irvine, peacefully slumbering, Irvine facedown on Zell's shoulder, Zell's hands folded neatly on top of his stomach.

He holds himself together so tightly that she sometimes forgets about the boy who showed up at her dorm room the night of Irvine Kinneas' first SeeD mission, three hours after Garden received word that all five SeeDs were MIA, suspected dead.

He'd dove deep into a bottle of vodka and only recently resurfaced, and she'd hurried him back to his own room because it was past curfew, because male cadets were banned from the female dormitories and vice versa, because he was so loud a few curious heads had begun to peek cautiously from behind cracked-open doors, and then she left him weaving in front of his door, trying to insert his I.D. card with increasingly shaky hands.

She turned to leave, listened to him swear, kick the door, swear even louder when he hurt his toe, and she should have crept quietly away before a patrolling instructor caught her in the wrong dorm after curfew, she should have just taken that first step, she should have never _stopped_-

But she did.

She turned back. She took his ID card with a sigh, swiped it for him, gripped him by the elbow and helped him patiently to his bathroom, where he proceeded to throw up twice in a row and insist, quite persistently, that she shoot him in the head. He threw up a third time, again demanded she put him out of his misery, and then passed out on the floor at her feet, waking up only now and again to vomit once more.

She gave up on attempting to drag him back into the main room and to his bed the first time he weakly lifted his head to dribble his lunch all over the tops of her boots.

He didn't even apologize. But then, personal etiquette perhaps isn't high on the to-do list of one whose spleen is trying to crawl out of their throat, as he confessed his was attempting to do.

Men are such frail creatures.

But Irvine Kinneas brought home books that could not be had at Garden anytime he was sent into Deling City, just for her, and he swept her bows and he taught her how to find shapes in clouds, and she had wanted so _badly _for him to come home too.

She sat all night with Seifer Almasy's head in her lap and the bathroom floor cold underneath her.

She watched the clock on her wrist tick tick tick, watched minutes crawl by like days and hours creep forward in decades, and she thought about the cadet who had just been laid to rest in a little cemetery by the sea, a tiny little twelve-year-old girl who wanted to be just like her, who picked the chain whip as her weapon, who carefully styled her hair just so, flipped up in the back, who junctioned Firaga too soon and blew out her veins.

Her family wept and the sun shone and earth swallowed wood and it was over.

It would be just that way for him as well. Seifer would stand shoulder to shoulder with her and Zell, staring straight ahead, and maybe he would cry and maybe he wouldn't: Death did not care either way.

They'd fold Irvine Kinneas into his box and put him away in the dirt and the sun would keep shining and the earth would keep moving, and a million different people all over the world would not even know.

They'd never feel him pass.

It is so hard to comprehend that all around you people go on about their days, from work to home and back again, when the entire world has just shifted beneath your feet, when grief brings you howling to both knees and they just go _on_, all of them, not understanding, not knowing, not _feeling_.

She looks up at him now remembering all of this, and the way he picked himself up the next morning and scrubbed himself off and spent all day thundering through Garden, demanding answers, and she wonders why she does not remember this more often, this part of her past that she can actually recall.

"They're fine," she tells him again.

He stands for a moment longer in the silence.

"I'm gonna' go take a shower."

He has been shaken indeed: he does not even invite her to join him.

* * *

Ok, mister, just-

Yeoch! Snarly old meanies when they're hurt, aren't they?

"Selphie, what are you doing?" Quisty asks tiredly from beside her.

She's putting on a play for them, of course! Mr. Sprinkles the Sock Puppet vs. Captain Snookie Seifer's Left Boot for the championship, booyaka! And she was just trying to get that guy to sit up just a little more, cause he really wasn't even that hurt -just a little ol' broken arm- and he was all slumped over and how was he supposed to see the final round- for the title, baby!- lying on the floor making little groany noises? And he _snapped _at her! Like he wanted to take her cute little head right off or something! Well, you listen here, buster, you're messing with Selphie Tilmitt now and she can hot glue a paper snow flake to a Festival Committee sign-up sheet faster than you can whip your little Acorn Andy outta' your pants when you really, really gotta' pee, like now or you'll go right in your pants, and you just _watch it_, cause paper snow flakes aren't the only things she can hot glue in 0.35 seconds.

Ask Gaden Markerson, who patted her on the butt while she was bent over getting something out of one of the lower lockers in the Training Center, and wha-_bam_!

Kinda' embarrassing to have to explain how you ended up stuck thingie-first to the giant poster of Adam Siegley Macie Frol keeps taped to the inside of her locker.

She's a safe-cracking whiz too, you know! Pick a combination any combination, thirty seconds flat, guaranteed or your money back!

"I was just trying to cheer them up, Quisty. You know- give 'em something to stare at besides the ceiling."

Quisty squints her eyes. "Whose shoe is that?"

"Mine!" she says brightly. Well, it is now, anyway. Finders keepers, right?

Quisty eyes her suspiciously and she puts on her bestest brightest look-how-cute-I-am-do-you-reeeaaally-think-a-face-like-this-could-tap-into-Garden's-sanitation-system-and-program-all-the-boys'-toilets-to-flush-at-regular-one-minute-intervals smile. (Darren Howley got blamed for the toilets thing which never made much sense to her because he was one of the first to come thundering out into the hallway outside the boys' locker room to scream at one of the poor hall monitors about getting someone on fixing the 'goddamned toilets' which had just ruined his shower. He forgot his towel, and man, the last flush musta' REALLY sent a whole buncha' cold water through the pipes, cause it was super _duper _small, kinda' like he was smuggling a little shriveled peanut in his no-no hair.)

"Why don't you just let them sleep, ok, Selphie?"

She pushes her bottom lip out and pulls Mr. Sprinkles off her hand, draping him across one knee. Well, _fine_. But that one guy on the end was really emotionally invested in seeing the end to Mr. Sprinkles vs. Captain Snookie, he told her so, in between gulping eyefuls of her boobs. That's ok, though. She forgives him for being all gross and oogly like that, because he's cute and he still smells ok even though he didn't shower yesterday, and when you're hurt you get a free pass anyway, like when you're old and you go around pinching girls' butts cause your brain went ka-BLOOM! and you don't know any better now.

The rain has turned to snow outside the window. It's no Trabia out there, of course, not this thin wet little layer that disappears into the streets and the lashes of children rolling snowballs between their hands, but it's kinda' nice to see anyway, you know? Sure, it's probably kinda' weird for her to smile when she sees the clouds roll in and the snow come down -everyone else can only sneer and snarl and shake a fist at the stuff- but this used to be her whole _world_, all this white going on forever and ever and ever.

She built a snowman outside T. Garden's gates last winter: she rolled the bottom half and Jessy made the top, and during a twenty-minute cocoa break in the cafeteria somebody came by and stuck a penis on it. Jessy added some boobs and they took pictures, draped themselves around it and lent it their scarves and their gloves and Selphie's tube of JuicyGloss in Frosted Pink no. 5, and one day later Jessy was gone and the snowman was still there.

The snow always stayed, in Trabia. That was what she liked about it; you never got that kind of permanence, living at Garden. Friends came and they went and you just kept smiling, you moved on to the next, and when that one left you too, you found someone new.

Jessy stayed for five years and then she left in pieces, and all she got for those five years was a minute in which all the classrooms and dorms and training rooms went still and silent and solemn, and then the hallways began to ripple and shift and flow once more and the teachers rapped rulers across desks and the weapon's classes took their places on the mats, and everyone forgot.

Put it away, Selphie. Gotta' smile, Selphie. Your friends are sad and you're their glue and glue has to hold, unless it's some kinda' cheap off-brand poop, and Selphie Tilmitt's high-end brand name or nothin', booyaka!

That was what she told herself, and for that one minute of still solemn silence she kept her head low and her tears quiet, and then she lifted her chin and she smiled around the table.

She bought everyone rounds of orange juice and made hers squirt out her nose to the tune of 'Mary Had a Little Lamb'.

No one expects something like that from someone like her, you know? That's the trick- you distract 'em, keep 'em laughing or grossed out or guessing what comes next, and after a while they forget just like everyone else, and it is only you who is left remembering and reliving and never letting go.

She sits herself cross-legged on the carpet across from Quisty, who's not watching Squall as much today, and she taps one finger idly on the toe of Seifer's boot, trying to ignore Captain Goo-Goo Eyes down on the end and the way he keeps motioning to her, his bound and bloody leg stretched out before him.

"Seifer was doing handstand push-ups in his room today."

Quisty just looks at her.

"He left his door open, which pretty much meant he _wanted _someone to watch, so just to make him feel better, I took a little peek, and his shirt flipped up a little since he was upside down, and whooie, he's got some nice man boobies, Quisty! You ever seen them before?"

Sometimes her roommate gets this look on her face when they are talking, like she is just humoring Selphie, like she's not entirely sure what to make of her but it would be rude to point out that she's not entirely sure what the hairy heck she's talking about so she just keeps her mouth shut and nods her head, but this isn't that look: this time she is genuinely amused. It's nice to see the little smile on her lips, because she is way too serious all the time, because she thinks too much about things and cares too hard about all the wrong people, and she's not really _bad_, and she doesn't deserve that, you know? G. Garden is a lot stricter than Trabia ever was, and it tries to carve you up, to hollow you out, but Quisty only _looks _like she has allowed Garden to do this to her. She wants to fit in, so she marches in step and she polishes her boots and she follows her orders, but you can't fool Selphie Tilmitt, no siree!

"I highly doubt Seifer would be thrilled to hear you describing him in such a manner."

"He's pretty cute, though, huh?"

"He's nice-looking, yes."

"Nice-looking? That's it, Quisty? So you've never even thought about him naked?"

"Of course not!"

Booyaka! Got her! Her face looks just like she's come straight outta' Trabia: the wind puts peppermint stripes on your cheeks in just exactly this shade of red, and she _knew _Squall couldn't be Quisty's whole world; he's really kinda' boring, you know? Too check-out-how-awesome-sauce-I-am-my-super-huge-not-compensating-sword's-even-_named_-after-me cool for everyone around him, and blegh, that _jacket_! How many cute little helpless furry animals had to die for him to look dumb?

He's kinda' short, too.

"So if he asked you out at some point, you'd say no?"

She looks genuinely confused. "Why would Seifer ask me out?"

Jeesh. Pretty and clueless. She doesn't want to stereotype…buuuut, Quisty does have those kinda' big knockers. And blonde hair.

"It's just theoretical."

"It's actually pronounced thee-or-et-i-cull-"

Blah, blah, blah. Take your nose outta' the textbooks once in a while, lady, and pay attention to all the flexing biceps right under your nose that want to go all romance book cover shirt-rippy on you.

"But if he _did_, you know, just for some reason. Would you ever consider it? I mean, he's really cute, and his butt looks really nice in his pants, and he's kinda' a meanie but he can also be nice sometimes, and his hair is _way _better than Squall's."

Quisty frowns. "What's wrong with Squall's hair?"

She slips right on past this question. "And Squall probably spends all his money on gunblade upgrades and hair gel and penis enlargement drugs, but Seifer's always really confident, so you gotta' wonder _what _he's so confident about, which is probably that he doesn't have to worry about anything in the pants department!"

Quisty blinks, blinks again, touches one hand to the back of her neck. "I'm…not sure I follow your logic, Selphie. Seifer is arrogant and so it means he's well-endowed? Squall is not, and therefore answers all those junk e-mails for male enhancement pills?"

Blondes.

"Quisty, nobody who's got a sword _that _big isn't trying to make up for something, you know?"

"Seifer carries the exact same weapon. Well, of course, it's a different model, and the upgrades Seifer has performed on Hyperion are entirely different from-"

"I knew this one guy with a really small wormstaff and he was kinda' always hovering around in corners but never really participating, just like Squall does, you know? I'm just _saying_, is all. Maybe you should go watch Seifer do some handstand push-ups."

"'Wormstaff?'" Quisty repeats, blinking again.

"It's a nickname for a guy's-"

"Yes, I got that, Selphie, thank you. It's just…a new one for me, I suppose." She twists her hands together in her lap and looks down at her fingers, snarled in a big white knot. "Why the interest in Seifer?"

"_I'm _not interested- I'm saying _you _should be interested. You should go out once in a while, Quisty. I bet you've probably never been on a date before, huh?"

"That doesn't really matter; Garden didn't train us to go on dates, Selphie. It's not what we're here for. Besides, even if I _were_ interested in dating, Seifer would not even be a remote possibility. I know there's appeal in a bad boy, Selphie, but men like Seifer are really only interested in one thing."

And, poop. Now she's got her Lecturing Look on. Which is pretty super duper ironic- imagine that _Quisty _thinks she has something to teach _her_, the _master _when it comes to twisting boys around her little finger. She's gonna' write a book one day on how to get a boy to do everything from ironing your uniform to taking the fall for that one time you sorta' raided the big industrial-size cafeteria fridge and found the lunch lady's secret stash of Pink Chocobo mix and the gallon jug of vodka and maybe you had just a little too much to drink, and just maybe you threw up in the big blue plastic mixing bowl full of chocolate cake batter for the headmaster's birthday-

What? He didn't _eat _it or anything, and the boy who took the fall only got a couple of weeks scrubbing T-Rex poop off the training center floors and he only slipped in a really big pile of Bite Bug guts and slopped his bucket full of T-Rex poop all down the front of his uniform _once_.

Weeell…ok. She probably shoulda' come clean. But it takes _forever _to get poop stains outta' your uniform, you know? And it gets under your fingernails and smears itself all through your hair and _blegh_!

"Where the fuck is my goddamned boot?" Seifer yells from the top of the stairs, and whoopsie! There's her cue to go!

"Here!" she says, pushing Mr. Sprinkles and Captain Snookie into her friend's hands, and now Quisty fumbles just slightly, almost drops Seifer's boot, catches it on top of her thigh. "See ya' later, Quisty!"

* * *

"Why the hell did you take my boot?" Seifer demands.

"I didn't. Why _would _I?"

"I don't fucking know- that's what I just asked you. You couldn't get a hold of a pair of my underwear, so you stole the closest thing of mine you could get your hands on because seeing me naked every time you close your eyes isn't quite enough to put you over the edge? You needed something that smelled like me to really stimulate all the senses? I'm just theorizing at this point, Trepe."

She throws the boot at his head.

"Is this the same kind of violent response you employ in your fantasies, or do you just go straight for the cliché bondage dominatrix move and tie me to my bed with your whip?"

"Oh, just go away," she snaps, crossing her arms.

"I'm not judging or anything, Trepe. Besides, I fantasize about the same thing. Sometimes you're in black leather, sometimes a maid uniform, but it always ends with me tied up on your bed getting ridden like you're trying to break my dick off."

She narrows her eyes. "I can make one part of that fantasy come true."

He walks away laughing.

He is _so infuriating _sometimes; where on _earth _did Selphie get the idea that the two of them might in any way be a good match?

He is only halfway across the room when she is suddenly sucked back down into that hot yellow noon, Seifer's hands on her knees and that pale lemon ball on the ground between their feet, and now the pieces come so hard and fast she is almost dizzy with how swiftly they assemble.

There are two memories she has never seen before. The bird and the dune and Seifer's hands balancing themselves gently on her knees and just what exactly this all means materializes first, stitches itself together into one cohesive whole at last, and the other-

The other…she doesn't…she can't…how could she _forget _something like that -she _hasn't_, has she- it's only a superimposing of her girlish fantasies onto another man-

She shoots clumsily to her feet, takes a step forward, but what the _hell _does she intend to do -she can't _ask _him- she can't say _anything _-this is utterly _insane_- it can't be a real memory -something has gone wrong- unjunctioning Shiva for the first time in years has unbalanced her, ripped free old memories and shaken them apart into pieces until they are all only little floating slivers, and she just put them back together wrong, that's all-

One, two, inhale, exhale.

She relaxes her face and unwinds her hands and lets all of this flow away from her like it is nothing, just a little blood beneath her boots leaking down into soil, something to be ignored, passed over, shuffled by.

She sits carefully down beside Zell to press her fingers gently to his wrist, and now Seifer reaches the top step, boot dangling by its laces from his fingers, and she is still tempted to call out, to bring him back, but she has remembered incorrectly -wouldn't he have _said _something-

The rough white hands that stopped her swing at its highest point belonged to him, and when he stopped that swing at its highest point he held her suspended there for just a moment, looking into her eyes with his young, young face, his forehead still smooth, and then he leaned in close and he kissed her, and he smelled of soap and she tasted rootbeer and she let go of the chains on that swing and tentatively touched the back of his neck and pulled him in close-

There have never been any swings at Garden.

She knew him before.

There has never _been _any _before_; there has never been anything beyond Garden and her eight blood-soaked years here. She used to dream up stories about this before, about her loving mother and father who never came to visit, who left her all alone, but forget that, she does not remember that when it is time to pretend: this loving mother and father had a little home in the city and they bought her books and they sent her off to school with warm embraces and hand-packed lunches, and perhaps one day they died in a tragic car accident and she was sent away; and because she loved them so much, because she could not stand the hole their deaths tore wide inside of her, she sealed it back up with forgetting, the most soothing anesthetic of them all.

Garden ground all of this pretending out of her years ago. She put down her fairytales and she picked up her whip and she took her first life at fifteen, before most have even lost their virginity, and she did not look back.

She stopped wondering. It didn't matter, she told Garden's on-site psychiatrist.

Garden is her home and she doesn't need anything else and if she ever had a loving mother and father they are gone now, one way or another.

But how could she have ever forgotten _him_?

* * *

**A/N: ****The Timber section has been massively changed and expanded upon, as you're probably beginning to see. We'll be here for awhile. Also, the creepy little phrases Edea/Ultimecea keep chanting are nursery rhymes (aren't children's songs fucked?) except for the one about the knight's drowned bride eating him. That one is of my own invention, because apparently shit like that just lives inside of my head until it's time for it to be used in my writing. **

******Also, don't try and make any sense of the sections which are from Edea/Ultimecea's perspective. Just go with the crazy. It's easier that way.**


	13. Interlude Six

**A/N: I was originally going to post this on Friday...then on Saturday...then on Sunday...you see what I mean when I talk of my little procrastination problem.**

**I was working on this the other day and I found myself a bit worried that maybe there wasn't enough happening, because I'm enjoying spending a lot of time rolling around in the characters' brains. I love very in-depth writing that really works itself down into a character's thoughts, because that's where the main story is, IMHO- I don't want cardboard cut-outs, I want real people who move me and make me root for them. The twistiest of plots isn't that interesting to me if I don't give a flying crap about the people involved. Yet _something_ has to happen- there are only so many pages in which a character can contemplate life before you want to see the events happening all around them. **

**So I flipped back through the last few chapters, and realized that within the space of a few chapters or so, two pretty big battle scenes occur; things explode; and more than one person has their skull caved in. Also, a carnival. (Chew on that one.) These events may not necessarily be written in a way that holds your interest (although hopefully they are), but I think it's safe to say that my "hey, all the characters are doing is sitting around and thinking" fears are a bit unfounded.**

**Also, this fic is now at 130,000 words in the original document, and the gang is not yet even out of Timber. (Close- I have a chapter and a half more to write and then it's time for me to move on, although you guys will still be here for some time.) Remember what I said about this being five million words? Yikes. In my defense, a lot more happens in Timber than in the original game. **

**As always, thank you for sticking with me. You guys are awesome.**

**Edited to add: I just saw on MSN that two bombs exploded earlier today at the Boston Marathon. I don't know where you are all located, but I know by my visitor stats that most of my readers are from the US, so I hope everyone is safe. Jesus. **

* * *

_Dear Seifer,_

_ I thought maybe we could ask each other some questions, maybe kind of…get to know one another all over again? Without the fighting, this time?_

_ I'll go first. What's your favorite memory from Matron and Cid's?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I've got a better question. Have you gotten any boobs yet?_

_ Sincerely, _

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ That's NONE of your business. Let's try this again: we'll start with something simple. Is your favorite color still red?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ Yeah, it's still red._

_ You're twelve now. A lot of the girls at school already have boobs. I was just wondering. You're the one who said you wanted us to get to know each other, right? _

_ Tell me,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ It's STILL none of your business. Puberty is a very intense and private experience, the details of which shouldn't be broadcast to everyone. How would you like it if I asked you if you'd experienced your first nocturnal emission yet?_

_ Anyway. You see how invasive your question was. My favorite color is still blue- it reminds me of the ocean. I miss the ocean a lot, here in Deling City. There are so many lights and people and things to do, but I miss the beach, and the orphanage, and having so much room to run; I always felt like I could just keep on running forever down that beach, it seemed to go on for so long. You can't do that here in the city; the backyards are all too small, and of course running in the streets is hardly advisory, with so much traffic. I miss the trees; I miss the way it smelled at Matron and Cid's. The city just smells like gasoline and fast food, and it's so noisy. It was always so quiet on the beach._

_ Well, as quiet as it could be with you there._

_ What's Balamb like?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ Huh? What's a 'nocturnal emission'? _

_ Deling City sounds pretty sucky. Balamb's pretty sucky too cause all the girls here are pretty dumb even if they have boobs, but you can go down to the docks and steal the fish they brought in for the day when the fishermen aren't paying attention. There's a dog down there who really likes cod. I gave him one of the fish I stole one day so now he always comes running up when he sees me and sometimes I throw things for him if he can find a stick or something. I don't know who he belongs to. Nobody ever really pays any attention to him, cept me. _

_ Did you know Zell's here? He wanted me to tell you hi._

_ You still haven't told me if you have boobs or not,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ A nocturnal emission is when a boy…well, he…haven't you gone over this in health class yet? It's when…it's when a boy experiences…the penis, when in an aroused state, gets hard to the touch, and, when stimulated, releases sperm, which then attaches itself to a woman's egg, resulting in a pregnancy. Sometimes, particularly when a male is first going through puberty, he can achieve orgasm from a particularly vivid dream, and that's what a 'nocturnal emission' is, when a male orgasms in his sleep. _

_ I am NOT telling you anything about my breasts._

_ Zell is in Balamb?_

_ How is he doing? Is he happy? Do you see him often? Do you go to the same school together? Did Irvine or Squall or Selphie end up in Balamb? Have you seen any of them? Tell him hello and that I've missed him. I hope he's happy; don't be mean to him the way you were at the orphanage._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ You mean a wet dream. You coulda just called it that in the first place, stupid. And I KNOW how kids are made Quistis I'm not RETARDED. _

_ Zell's still stupid, but he doesn't cry as much. His mom's a nice lady, even though she's probably retarded too because she'd have to be to adopt such a little whiny crybaby. I don't think she beats him enough though cause he's still annoying. None of the others are here or at least they don't go to the same school so I've never seen them but if they were here at all I should have seen them by now. Balamb's really small. We go down to the docks a lot. I showed Zell the dog and we stole some bait out of one of the fishermen's tackle boxes and went to one of the other docks so he wouldn't notice we were using his stuff and fished for like five hours. Zell was really bad at it but I caught like five fish. _

_ So, are you ugly now or anything? _

_ You won't answer the boobs question so at least answer this one,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ That isn't nice. Zell's always been a very nice boy; he's just a little sensitive, and only then because you were constantly picking on him. I really think you should treat him better. He wanted to be your friend when you first showed up at Matron and Cid's, remember? He thought the two of you were already basically best friends because you both had blonde hair. I miss him a lot; he was always really nice to me, which is more than I can say about some people. _

_ You shouldn't steal, Seifer. It isn't right. _

_ I wish I could see Balamb. My mother has a book about all the best vacation spots in the world, and Balamb is actually number twenty on the list. The sunsets are supposed to be some of the most beautiful you'll ever see, and it's really peaceful, and the people are so nice, and on Sundays in the spring there's an outdoor market where local shops sell all sorts of things like jewelry and food and beautiful rare old books that are hard to get a hold of. I hear the library there specializes in out of print copies you can't find anywhere else. I wish we had something like that here; I've been looking for a copy of _The Water Babies _by Charles Kingsley for a couple of years now. I've never been able to find it in any of the stores here. I guess it went out of print twenty years ago, and the library doesn't carry a copy of it either. _

_ It doesn't matter what I look like, Seifer. Matron always taught us all that what's on the inside is more important anyway, remember?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ So you're ugly then?_

_ Only ugly girls think what's inside is more important,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I am NOT ugly. Why do you have to be so annoying? You are always trying to pick a fight. Just for one letter, can you not say something that you know will anger me?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ Maybe you just get mad too easy. Maybe your parents need to make you take anger management or something. They made me go through that at school. It was dumb and the kid I beat up deserved it anyway. He was trying to drown Zell._

_ Send me a picture if you want me to believe that you're not ugly,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ Someone tried to drown Zell? What are you talking about?_

_ I will NOT send you a picture stop being SHALLOW,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ This guy from the middle school thinks he's awesome cause he's way bigger than everyone else and one time me and Zell were down at the docks and he shoved Zell off and then held his head under. Zell popped right back up so at first I thought the guy was just kidding around but then he shoved him back under and Zell started to struggle and he wouldn't let him up so I kicked the guy in the balls. He's big but he's pretty slow so when he tried to kick me I just ducked right out of the way. Plus he was holding his balls so he didn't really have good aim. Then I pushed him in the water and held his head down for a while to see how HE liked it. They didn't make him go to anger management though just me because he was from some rich family and I'm just some dumb little orphan I guess._

_ Did you get the package I sent you?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I got it. _

_ I'm not sure what to think about you sometimes. Every time I'm fed up with you, every time I think I should just stop writing you to preserve my sanity, you do something that makes me think maybe you aren't so bad after all._

_ I don't think you really are, you know. I mean, when I'm not busy being mad at you, I can see that you're not. You try very hard to be bad, to show everyone how tough you are, but then you do something nice, and I…well, just, thank you. _

_ It's beautiful. It's even in much better shape than I would have expected. Where did you find it?_

_ You're not a dumb little orphan. _

_ Matron did love you, you know. I really hope you do know that, Seifer. _

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ It was at the library. I sneaked it out under my shirt. I'm KIDDING. I knew you'd crap your pants if I stole it, so I asked the lady if I could buy it off her. I lied and said it was for my girlfriend and she thought that was so cute she sold it to me even though she wasn't supposed to. Mr. Williams our neighbor pays me to mow his lawn and weed his garden and stuff, so I paid for it with the money he gives me just so you wouldn't get your stupid panties in a twist or something._

_ You like me, don't you? I always knew this was gonna happen._

_ I'll consider it if you send a picture,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I do NOT. _

_ There's a boy at school who's MUCH more interesting than you. He's very cute, and he isn't conceited, and he saves me a seat at his lunch table even though the most popular girl in school always tries to sit next to him. He even holds open doors for me. I bet you'd just let them slam in my face. _

_ Just because I acknowledge that you are not heinous all the time HARDLY means I have romantic feelings for you._

_ Get over yourself,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I know you do. I bet you think about me all the time. I bet you wish that dumb fat loser who saves you a seat was me. _

_ If you don't like me, why don't you prove it?_

_ Just admit it,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ How on earth am I supposed to prove that I don't like you? You are obviously so delusional that you'll believe anything you want to, regardless of what I tell you._

_ NO,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ My class is gonna go on a field trip next week on Friday. We're gonna be in Deling City, at some dumb museum. There's this big fancy hotel that's just down the street from it; we're gonna stop in there next for a tour of part of Deling City's 'historical downtown' or something stupid like that. _

_ Meet me outside, unless you're too scared to show up because you're afraid that you won't be able to control yourself around me because you're so in love with me. 3:00. You should be out of school by then, right? So you won't even have to break any stupid rules._

_ See you there,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I waited at the hotel. I saw a school bus from Balamb pull up, and all these kids come pouring out, but you weren't among them; I looked. You can't tell me to go meet you and then just not show up; it's extremely rude._

_ Maybe YOU were scared. Maybe YOU like ME. _

_ Where were you? Was this just some kind of joke? It really wasn't funny at all. I don't appreciate being jerked around, Seifer._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I was there. You should have looked on the bus, stupid. I got detention so I wasn't supposed to go on the trip but I snuck on anyway and Ms. Langdon caught me after we'd already pulled outta Balamb. She wouldn't let me get off the bus. _

_ I'm sorry you didn't get to see me. I know you were really looking forward to it. We're gonna be taking another trip in October though. An aquarium or something stupid like that this time. There's nothing to do in Balamb, so we have to take all our school trips somewhere else._

_ I'll let you know when I'll be there. You're gonna come meet me, right?_

_ I know you will,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I'll consider it, if I don't have something better to do. Will Zell be there? You never did tell me if the two of you are attending the same school._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ Who the hell cares about Zell? I'm the one you want to see anyway. We don't go to the same school, so he's not gonna be there so don't worry about it. The trip's on October 28__th__. Do you know where the aquarium is? That's where we're gonna be._

_ You're gonna be there,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I know where the aquarium is. It isn't far from my house, actually. I'll THINK about meeting you there. Give me the time, and I'll decide. I'm not going to wait around this time, though. If I don't see you, I'm leaving right away. It's too cold to stand around waiting for someone who should maybe behave a little better in school and then he wouldn't have to worry about getting detention and standing people up. _

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ October 28__th__, 1:00, in front of the Deling Aquarium. I'll be there._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

And so he is.

She watches from across the street, from underneath the striped green awning of a small coffee shop, twisting her hands nervously in front of her, rolling one foot up onto its side and then back down flat.

He is thirteen now, a head taller than all the other kids, gangly as boys so often are at that age, his limbs long and lean and bleached white by cloudy autumn afternoons.

She swallows.

She twitches her fingers together into a knot, peels them back apart, watches him lift his head and squint out across the street, and his scowl is just how she remembers it and she wonders if his smile is as well, if it is still a little crooked, a little higher on the left-

She cut class for this. She asked to be excused from 4th period Centran History to use the bathroom, meekly collected her hall pass and slid out into the polished white corridor, and then she walked straight to her locker and grabbed her coat and strode confidently out the main double doors smiling and flashing her pass and waving here and there to teachers and students she knew, and she still doesn't understand _why_.

They will call her parents. She will be kept after school; she will have one permanent glaring flaw on an otherwise spotless record, just for _him_, and the book he sent wasn't _that _nice and she hasn't cherished it _that _much and if she hurries back now maybe her mother and father won't have to know at all; maybe she can still excuse her absence away on an upset stomach, a bad lunch-

She does not move.

She stands clutching the ends of her sleeves, kneading the material back into her palm, feeding it through her fingers, and she knows the precise moment he sees her because for just this one precise moment he is just as frozen as she: he stares without blinking, transfixed, and something melts inside her chest and leaks down into her stomach and she smiles helplessly, lifts her hand to shyly wave-

He turns away.

This something that has melted inside her chest and leaked down into her stomach drains itself onto the concrete beneath her shoes.

He doesn't recognize her. She knew him right away and the first thing she thought was how _well _he'd grown up, how very, very _cute _he suddenly is, and her heart did this funny fluttery little leap as this acknowledgement seeped its way down to reach it, and he doesn't even remember her.

She pinned her hair up for this and she snuck some of her mother's mascara and then at the last minute she decided to borrow some of her lipstick as well, and one of the older girls showed her how to put it all on in the school bathroom, and she cooed and she fawned and could not get over how _pretty _Quistis looked all done up, but obviously _he _doesn't think so- what a stupid waste of _time _this has all been-

She sticks her hands in her pockets and turns away and there is suddenly a hand on her elbow, jerking her backward, and she is so startled she cannot help the little strangled scream that works its way up her throat and out her mouth-

"Shh! Shut up, dummy. Someone's gonna' think I'm kidnapping you."

His voice is deeper. His hand is still on her arm, and his fingers are warm, and he didn't forget her, he did not pass his eyes right over her looking for someone else, and she hardly even knows what to _say_-

She stands blinking up at him as he steps around her on the sidewalk; she is tall for her age but he is even taller, and she has to look up several inches just to meet his eyes, and they are even greener than she remembers, and this close she can count his freckles; she can see that he has just licked his lips, that he has a tiny little nick of a healing cut over his left eyebrow, that he has begun to grow the faintest dusting of blonde down across his upper lip.

She wonders if it is soft, or coarse as her father's cheek where he presses it to hers for family photos. Do the girls he probably kisses all the time like it, or does it get in the way? Does it rub uncomfortably or slide smoothly?

"Come on," he says, and grabs her by the hand, and now she is jerked nearly off her feet, and this certainly hasn't changed at least, this over-confident pushiness.

But his fingers are different, and the shape they make against her own is new, and even though he is arrogant and annoying and she should make him let go she instead holds on, grips him back, lets herself be propelled down the sidewalk and into the crowd. "What time does your bus leave?" she ventures tentatively, her shoes rapidly click click clicking down the sidewalk.

"Who cares?"

"Well, you have to make sure and be back in time so you don't miss it."

"Nah. There's a train station right nearby. I'll just grab a ride there when I'm ready to leave. I have some money with me."

"Seifer, your mother will worry! You can't do that!"

"I don't have a mother. And anyway, I already told Lena I'm gonna' spend the night at Zell's. She's got nine other kids to worry about. She's not gonna' care if I want to spend the night somewhere else. I do it all the time. Hurry _up_. I gotta' get out of here before Mrs. Grainer notices I'm gone."

"Don't they do headcounts once everyone is back on the bus?"

"Yeah."

"Then you have to go back! She'll get in trouble if you aren't there."

"Tch. She's old, Quistis. Don't worry about it, all right? She'll just think she left me behind at school. I usually have detention or something anyway; she won't remember."

"I just think it's incredibly irresponsible-"

He stops abruptly in front of her and she nearly runs up over the top of his heels, trying to stop in time. "Does your little _boyfriend _like it when you boss him around like this? Is that why he's always saving you a seat at lunch, because he can't get enough of it?"

She yanks her hand out of his and stands glaring up at him. "He _isn't _my boyfriend. He's just a nice boy who knows how to treat girls with a little respect-"

"He's just being nice to you so you'll let him touch one of your boobs or something."

"He is _not_! Just because you can't understand what it's like to be nice to a girl without having any ulterior motives doesn't mean that other boys aren't capable of it." He makes her so _mad _sometimes; can't he just be the boy who stayed after class to build her a snow globe, who sends her books and makes her laugh, who lets her know that she is not alone, someone still remembers, someone still cares- she just wants _that _Seifer; she _likes _that Seifer-

He shoves his hands into the pockets of his faded black jeans and scowls. "I just don't want you letting him put his nasty face all over you or something. You think every guy except me is so nice, but most of 'em are douche bags that just pretend to be nice, so they can get girls like you."

"What's _that _supposed to mean?" she bristles, pulling herself up straight, stretching herself as far as she can go. She hates that he looks down on her now, that there is so much disparity between their heights. "Are you trying to say I'm easy?"

"No, stupid!" he snaps. "I'm trying to say you're pretty!"

The crowd swells and shifts and detours around them, and for just a moment it is like the sidewalk has emptied entirely; they are its only occupants now, and she can only stare blankly blinking at him, trying to assimilate what he has just said.

"Oh," she says quietly. He looks away. "I haven't kissed him or anything. He really is just a friend, Seifer. Are you…are you jealous?"

"Tch." He scratches the back of his neck.

He does not answer her.

She laces her fingers together and stares down at her fingers, rolls her feet from side to flat and back again.

He darts his hands forward suddenly, stretches them out to cover hers; he will not look at her. "Your hands are cold."

When she swallows it sticks, takes her a second try, and she does not understand why her heart has begun this funny little fluttering again or how his hands can feel so very very warm in this weather that steals her breath from between her lips in little white wisps. "I've been waiting for a little while. I…I had to sneak out of school, so I left early, to make sure I gave myself plenty of time."

He does look up now. "You snuck out of school to come meet me?"

"It's only 1:00, Seifer. Where did you think I was supposed to be right now?"

He beams. "I thought you had one of those teacher conference days or something. I never thought you'd actually have the balls to cut class."

She wipes the smile from her face and sticks her nose in the air. "Yes, well, I knew how much you were looking forward to this, and I decided-"

He leans in and her voice suddenly drys up in her throat and her fingers tighten convulsively inside his own and then his lips are on hers, and the faintest dusting of blonde down across his upper lip scrapes just enough to remind her he is growing up, and it is not uncomfortable and she does not hate it at all, and when he pulls away at last he buries his face against her shoulder, his hands still in hers.

She kisses his cheek timidly, testing, and he lifts his head back up to find her mouth with his own once again, and now he lets go of her hands and slides them across her hips to lock them together in the small of her back. She pushes forward into him, loops one arm around his neck, feels a little shivery ripple walk its fingers up her spine, pushes forward, forward-

He breaks away breathing hard, cheeks flushed, hair mussed, and from a nearby bench an old woman smiles at them, and makes a comment about young love that barely even registers, she is so flustered: she didn't know kissing could be like _that_. There was a boy a few months ago who surprised her after gym class one day, ducking behind the building to slap his mouth messily down across hers, and for just a moment she let him smear his slime across her lips because she was curious, because you were supposed to want to do this, because everyone else had already done it and she was just so _tired _of being left behind.

But she pushed him away and when he tried to move in again, this time going for her breasts, she punched him right in the eye, just as she had done to Seifer years and years ago for some transgression or another, and from then on she did not have to worry about any boys trying to surprise her again. Word moves so quickly, among junior high students.

Kissing was overrated anyway, she had decided; it didn't matter; she didn't care if none of them ever looked twice at her again.

She understands now that nothing about it is overrated, that what is important is not the act itself but who is behind it, and she wants to kiss him again so badly: he tastes like breath mints and his hands shake just a little and she finds it ridiculously cute that he looks so nervous, that he has not let go of her waist.

"Can we go somewhere else?" he asks unsteadily.

* * *

She takes him to a bookstore down the street, a shop she knows well, with all these little empty corners where they can hide away out of the cold.

They sit in separate chairs at first, her hands tucked beneath her thighs, his curled around both kneecaps, and for just a moment they stare at one another, drink in new angles and curves and hairdos.

She opens her mouth to ask him how he's been and if he likes it here and were the roads ok for his trip over, and something seizes her tongue and strangles it between these unseen grasping fingers and she says nothing.

He puts his feet up on the arm of her chair.

"Seifer, you're not allowed to-"

"Knew that'd make you open your mouth."

She crosses her arms indignantly. "I just think that you should respect the rules of-"

"Quisty," he says, and she snaps her mouth shut and leans forward with both hands on her knees, her shoulders rounding up toward her ears, and she just…she's just so _glad _to hear him say that.

Her name is always 'Quistis' when they have time to address her at all, never 'Quisty', never 'Quis' or 'Quissy' or anything with a little thought and warmth behind it, and she just…she never understood how much it _hurt _not having those names; she never knew she _needed _them but it does hurt it _hurts so much _why couldn't she _stay_; why couldn't they _all _stay; why did they have to go away and _leave her_-

He sits forward. "Are you crying?"

"No," she sobs.

Matron _knew _didn't she; _she knew _they wouldn't love her but who cares it's only _Quisty _-she's so _bossy_- give her away to someone who will give her pretty things that's good enough isn't it-

It's _not good enough _it's _never good enough _you can have all her _stupid _pretty things she _hates _them-

Seifer kneels in front of her chair and rests his hands on her thighs and she is not alone; she is not _alone_.

She wipes her eyes on her sleeve and tucks her hair behind both ears and he rests his face cheek-down in her lap and he doesn't ask and he doesn't tease and she loves him.

It is that simple.

Once there was a boy who wrote letters and sent them out into the world and a princess in her tower who caught these letters and hid them between the pages of all her favorite books, where all good things wait.

In this way she kept the boy, who become a man, who went out into the world and slew great monsters and never stopped writing.

He did not come to her for many years, this boy who became a man, but he did not forget; he kept moving forward through the years and down the road and over great mountains.

She did not despair.

She was not alone, in her tower of words.

And one day far in the distance appeared a man, strong and tall with hands spotted in black ink, and here her story began, on the day she left her tower and went out into the world beyond, where stories are made.


	14. Chapter Seven

**A/N: No time for my usual long-winded author's note, as I'm editing this on my lunch break, but that's good right? Means you guys can get to the chapter faster. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for sticking around, guys. Also, the idea of soldiers being drafted into Garden came from DK's 'Story', which I recommend you read. **

* * *

**Chapter Seven**

Timber Hotel

Timber

It is endearing the way they fawn over him.

He is taken away on a stretcher, born across the muddy streets toward the waiting transport, and they follow along beside him all the way back to this transport, joking and mocking and lightly punching his shoulders, ruffling his hair, pinching his cheeks.

He swats them away like flies, and they break apart, circle, dive back in.

He calls Seifer something she does not want to repeat; he makes a feeble swipe for Irvine's hat; he is shut away inside the transport smiling.

You smile when you can, in this sort of life, and sometimes that smile must be faked and sometimes it must be forced, but what she has noticed about this man with the black ink on his cheek and the bounce in his step is just how _genuine _his always seems to be. He is pale and drawn and shrunken in on himself beneath standard-issue wool and starch and his smile still tells them about how it is going to be ok, how they are all going to come through, and she wonders sometimes, when she cannot sleep, when the ceiling spreads itself out above her in white-winter forever, why men like Zell Dincht are here.

They believe in good so hard it hurts; they _know _down to the very deepest parts of their existence that they fight for righteousness, that this cause for which they take wounds and lose friends and die bloody is never wrong.

The world is divided, cut away down the middle: one side black and one side white, but how do you be that _sure_; how do you know that this man deserves to die and that one needs to live- how do you believe your fist has not fallen wrong, your bullet not gone astray-

She stands in the mud and watches the rain turn to snow and back again.

The transport spins its tires and flings mud into the sky and roars away in smoke white as snow.

She stands for a very long time.

"Trepe?" he calls.

She blinks herself back into this world.

"Let's go. The faster we kill the fuckers, the faster we get out of here."

A bird, a dune, a pair of hands stitched in white thread.

A boy and a swing and the taste of rootbeer, the scent of summer.

For years she learned and fought and trained beside him, and she never knew.

She never looked.

You go through life so _sightless _sometimes, and then out emerges the sun to drive its blind white needles through your eyes and still sometimes nothing is illuminated, there is still too much dark; you close your lids carefully over the needles and do not stare, refuse to see, and she's sorry, but this is how it has to be.

There was no before.

She did not know him and he did not know her and it's not his fault; it's not his _failing_: it just hurts so _much_, to catch glimpses of this _before _that she has lost, to tentatively touch the splintered pieces of these old memories and feel how raw they are, how much they ache.

She once read of a soldier who came home on leave, who leaned his rifle on the foyer of his childhood home and ran his fingers lovingly over his books and sat alone in gardens frosted in October death, and this soldier who put down his rifle almost could not pick it up again.

This is what these memories are, a sort of leave, a break: she was not always a soldier, and she once knew things beyond death and how to mete it out and when to accept it, and returning from all of this is just too _hard_.

He probably does not even remember this himself after all, and so why should she hold onto it; why should she grip something tight when everything she has clung to has only ever slipped itself through her fingers?

"Go get Squall and Selphie. We move out immediately."

* * *

_The woods are hung with shadows and shapes; they blend together into one impenetrable smoke-white block. _

_ They come alive. _

_ The first time you see these animals come howling out of the fog, get ready to empty your pants. _

_ They walk on two legs and they are clothed as humans; they wear dirt and blood and pieces of their friends in stripes on their cheeks, just like us, and that is the scariest damn thing of all, this mirror they hold up as they charge. _

_ Through recruitment, through basic training, maybe even your first skirmish, you are right. _

_ You are better than them. They are the mess, you are the mop, and it's time for a little clean-up on aisle five. _

_ And then the woods come alive and you do not pick one or two off here and there, just to keep them at bay; you do not shoot only when you have to, because someone else has already aimed your way, because it is kill or be killed. _

_ You are swept along on this thing that turns men into monsters and you add your banshee shrieks to the screams and you shoot, stab, burn, thrust your fingers into sockets and hold on tight, bite, kick, slam someone's brother into the mud and bring your rifle down onto his head until his rotten-melon skull comes apart at the seams; you smash your last grenade into the teeth of a man who is trying to surrender, who is pulled under this tide and does not resurface, you reach out with your bare damn hands and pinch closed a throat because you _didn't want to be here _you never wanted to _be here_-_

_ Your boots punch through the mud and the blood and the limbs that stand on their own, you hold your rifle out before you wailing this awful beast cry and you hammer and stab and tear to pieces the spine of one who didn't get away fast enough, just a kid, maybe his first time out in these woods, and he falls and you scramble over him like he is garbage, you grind him down, you push him face first into the earth to live his last few moments surrounded in dark, breathing intestine slush. _

_ Think I am better than them? Think because I am a writer, because I have crawled beneath the skins of these humans called 'protagonists' and forced myself to understand, that I flinch back, stand quietly on the sidelines? _

_ I do not. _

_ My boots punch through the mud and the blood and the limbs that stand on their own, and you already know the rest. _

_ Someone swings a blow scraping past my ear and I turn, find his face with the butt of my rifle, pound his nose apart into splinters, keep going until his mouth is a soggy red smudge, until his little piano-key teeth stick themselves upright in the dirt, glistening. _

_ Turn, stab, duck, _roll_- I fire a burst at point-blank range, and this man in front of me becomes shreds of uniform blowing in the wind, and now the ground heaves beneath me and somewhere off to my left dirt geysers, and I am thrown-_

_ The ground slaps stars down over my eyes and I roll, spit, pop back to my feet, swing, swing _swing_-_

_ You see people passing one another in the streets who smile and wave and nod to these strangers they don't have to be nice to, and you think, hey, the world ain't so bad after all; it doesn't have to be like this; mankind's done a lotta' shitty things to each other, but there's nothing like that in _me_,_ _look, I'm nodding too, I just acknowledged that guy with the face full of moles who picks his nose and doesn't care who's watching. These geezer politicians who send our young men off to die for them- there's just somethin' about 'em, they ain't what's normal- that's why they're politicians in the first place, because there's a devil brewin' in 'em. And those soldiers- well, poor kids, they just weren't right in the first place; you don't stab a man through the face and twist your knife around in his skull until you pull it back out gleaming with brains if something didn't go real wrong at home. _

_ But I'll tell ya' something. _

_ When I was fourteen I found a bird in the weeds bordering the fence separating my house from Kiros'. Just a little thing, one wing torn almost in half; looked like a cat got it. It looked up at me so damn _plaintively_, flopping that torn wing pathetically across the grass, kicking its feet in the dirt, heaving, rolling, trying to get its legs underneath it- it broke my damn heart. I picked it up, cradled it against my chest, murmured that wordless nonsense you use to soothe babies and animals, and it pecked the shit out of me. _

_ Almost ripped my damn thumb off. _

_ I took it to the vet anyway. I wrapped my thumb and emptied the jar I kept stashed behind my dresser and you've never seen a kid run so fast before, my right hand trailing red-smeared toilet paper, my left hand cupping this stupid bird, and every cent I dumped from this jar I kept stashed behind my dresser went toward the rescue of this damn bird, who thanked me by trying to rip off my other thumb. _

_ You take a kid like that, who can't stand to watch one dumb little ol' robin suffer, and you put him out here in these woods and he kills until his uniform turns from blue to red. _

_ You think it's not in me? _

_ Remember the video of the shoppers pulling each other apart beneath 50% off signs, how they trampled and hit and nearly killed one another over some phones? _

_ And you put a gun in our hands, a bomb, a knife, and you expect compassion? You want me to go for the clean blow, to make sure there is no suffering, to not _lower myself_-_

_ We are all belly-down in the mud at some point or another. _

_ Maybe it's freedom you want, maybe it's a little glory, maybe Hyne gave you guts and nothing else._

_ Maybe it's about a phone._

_ But you'll charge the damn hill one day and you'll stick a man until he falls, and then you will kick him to make sure you finished the job. _

_ I get ahold of one of the shovels we use to dig ourselves down into the earth and overhand it into a soldier's forehead, and his white parchment skin peels open around the sharpened edge of this shovel to sting my eyes with little red drops liks rain and he sways, he falls, he is crushed beneath my boots. _

_ I have dropped my rifle somewhere behind me. _

_ I fight on with this sharpened shovel, stabbing, slicing, smashing. _

_ I lock my teeth into soft white throat skin and hold on and feel boots scrabble against my shins and cold steel press its tip against my stomach like a single lacy star of a snowflake, burning-_

_ -and my own knife slips itself from my belt into my numb wooden hand and when I whip my head back I also push forward, through the gut, push push push, they used to tell us at boot camp- through the damn target not to-_

_ He coughs blood into my face and folds his accordion legs into pleats beneath him, and I pull my foot back and smash the toe of my boot into his jaw as hard as I can because his central nervous system has not yet shut down, he is still reaching, weapon in hand, and I am still in range, and I kick him again, _again_, and he slides away down the slight rise of the hill where I stand and slithers into a pile at the bottom._

_ And then the next one is on me, and I turn, and stab him too. _

_ A shovel, a hand, a knife; in here you fight with anything you've got, and you rip, you tear, you gut, until all of a man becomes nothing. _

_ Use your fists, your feet, your teeth- what do you care you're not even human anymore- you crouch in mud up to your ankles to shit; you pick brains from underneath your fingernails; you tear through a man's flimsy tissue throat just because he was there, just because he did not move in time, just because you were _never supposed to be here_; you were a _good kid_, dammit- _you were a good kid and this is not you _this was _never supposed to be you_ why didn't this stupid damn other guy stay home; why didn't he pick another way, a different path- _why did he make you do this_-_

_ I push forward_;_ my shovel rasps its sharpened tip down through soft marshmallow eyes that flex and give and burst apart; I heft it like an axe, cleave it down through the forehead, pound, hammer, nail down into their soft quicksand graves these men who are just like me, whose only mistake was to wear a different uniform._

_ I do this until I lose my hold on the shovel, until the sun comes out, until those of us left still standing are few, until the gas comes down like a fog through the trees._

* * *

_ I bed down with a dead man, breathing my stale rubber air. _

_ We are hunched down together into the closest trench I could find, this dead man and me, and he watches me through his green glass eyes and I watch him through my blue marble own, and this fog that coils in spirals along the ground reaches one unlucky bastard who didn't get his mask secured in time, and he leans his hands down onto his knees, coughs, spits, begins to scream._

_ I shut my eyes._

_ You do not watch._

_ I learned that the first time. _

_ Galbadia first issued these masks while I was on leave in Deling, and when I came back, there was my very own waiting for me, black rubber and sheer plastic, its thin elephant trunk hose swinging down loose against my arm as I picked it up for the first time, turned it over in my hands, asked Kiros what the hell it was for. _

_ Just keep the damn thing on your belt, he told me. Don't ever take it off. He showed me how to seal it, how to lock it tight so that I inhaled only this stagnant rubber stink, and he pressed his fingers down hard into my shoulder and bored his eyes all the way through my own and again he told me, "Put it on anytime it gets misty out- as _soon _as it does, you got that? Don't take it off until some asshole who's spent the whole war trying to prove himself takes it off first and walks around without coughing his lungs out onto the ground." _

_ Timber had developed this gas, he explained to me._

_ It didn't mean anything to me at the time. They never said anything about it in basic training; I'd never heard of any such damn thing, mist that burned each breath you took, that shoved its hot white knife down your throat and gagged you on its edge until it pried your lungs free in pieces. _

_ But Kiros is not an idiot and I can't count the number of times his advice has saved me from a sound spanking, a grounding, and so I hooked that mask to my belt and I kept his words in the back of my mind, and the first time that fog descended through the trees I grappled it onto my face and snapped the straps down tight and all around me men fumbled to do the same, hissed their jagged exhalations into the sky and fell down screaming, and I just _crouched _there, the splintered lace ground beneath my boots and the gray autumn sky above my head and how do you _describe _something like that-_

_ You take a thousand different nightmares and you fuse them all together, blend them so thoroughly you leap from one right into the next and from there to the one beyond, and you will advance this way through these thousand different nightmares, leaping, touching down, running on, and you will never even touch what I saw in the woods that day. _

_ The brittle leaves on the ground snapped and popped and cracked apart beneath them, buried them in flame and cinnamon and hot paprika dust, and they just kept _falling_, coughing, thrashing in blind animal panic, flinging their tears and their snot and their screams, doubling over, convulsing-_

_ The first time you watch, because you can't look away. _

_ The second time, you pull your mask down and you tuck your face into the crook of your elbow, you breathe in sobs, because each one is your last _you know it _you didn't seal off that last little corner _it's coming it's coming it's coming oh Hyne please please don't let it find you_-_

_ You watched their chameleon skin shudder from red to green to ash- you watched them spit up their _lungs_, their throats, their _tongues,_ and don't let this happen to you too, _please_, Hyne-_

_ You watched this fog that is not a fog shrivel them down into mummy remains and the sun come out to bake them into fetal figurines and this whole time you sat and you did nothing and you kept breathing this rubber and plastic reek- you just _sat there _-_you just sat there_- so much for all your damn _courage_-_

_ And now?_

_ Now that I have seen this a hundred times, a thousand, a million?_

_ I stare up at the sky with a dead guy beside me, breathing my reptile exhalations, listening to them hiss slowly and steadily and carefully. _

_ I thumb the grenade on my belt and I think about the guy who died for it, and how easy it is to pull a pin, to not roll away. _

_ Your first brush with death is so _new_; it paints the grass emerald and the sky robin's egg and the burned sleeve of your uniform raven, and man how _good _does everything taste; how damn _happy _are you to see your home, your friends, that guy who slept in the bunk above you during basic and had this tiny little issue with bladder control. _

_ Your thousandth takes your leaden limbs and drapes them sweatily around your gun, your knife, your bomb, because screw this _waiting, _you are so _tired _of it, dammit- you are going home one way or another, in a bag or in a box, and might as well hurry it up-_

_ I thumb my grenade. _

_ My mother, you see, she…she never would have wanted this for me._

_ She'd probably rather see me dead. _

_ She raised a son who rescued birds and always shared his cookies at lunch and helped little old ladies across the street, and what these woods have twisted me into…she never would have wanted that. _

_ A guy wants to be someone his mom can brag about, you know? He wants to be the guy she can point to and tell everyone, "See, that's my son, isn't he handsome; he works with impoverished cancer-stricken children and yessiree he's single why don't I just scribble down his number real quick for you." _

_ If she was still here, if she had not left years ago, here is what she would have to say about me: _

_ My boy Laguna killed a man today. He killed him because he was angry, because he was so tired and he wanted out and the woods are just too long, too dark, and it isn't _fair_; and so now because my boy Laguna was angry and tired and trapped he took a father away from his daughter, a husband from his wife, a son from his mother, and can you believe that once this boy wiped my face whenever I cried; once he raced a bird to the vet just because he couldn't stand to see it die-_

_ I _am_ tired, mom. _

_ I am so _tired _all the damn _time _and why does it always have to be _me _who makes it through the last bombardment- that guy had a _kid a goddamned kid you hear me_; who's waiting for _me _to come home- I stabbed a guy who was already down until he quit kicking and then I pinned his friend wriggling by the throat and why do _I _deserve to lie here with my perfectly timed leap and my perfectly sealed mask and _why the fuck didn't I just stay home, publish my first book_- why didn't I give her something to look down on with a smile-_

_ I watch the dead man and he watches me, and the fog sifts its gray ash down through the trees and onto my head and I breathe my second hand air and flick the pin of my grenade, back, forth, shift it up a little, ease it back down, and while I am staring into this dead gray sky the fog turns to snow, and now beyond the lip of the trench I hear my name, the dry crunching of those cereal leaves shattering beneath boots, the slow adhesive clearing of a throat working loose the bonds of phlegm. _

_ I look up. _

_ "Get out of there," Ward tells me quietly, Kiros beside him, and they both extend their hands down to me. _

_ Up and forward._

_ That's the only way you come through these things. _

* * *

President Deling makes his pretty little speech about justice and brighter futures and his newly appointed ambassador, and she watches the broadcast alone in her room until a woman steps up beside him at the podium, and it is _that _woman, painted lips and bright yellow eyes and that _voice_, that sharp razor hook that pulls up everything she does not want to see and brings it all screaming into bright white daytime-

She clicks off the TV.

The silence is very loud.

It's none of her business anyway, who the woman is or what Deling does with her.

Galbadia has changed their contract. The president's bodyguards are alert and in force and what happened in front of the Timber Hotel will not happen again, but it is time to clean up the streets.

Stomp until there is nothing left to flatten: this has always been Galbadia's policy.

Start killing and do not stop until you reach their leader, Martine told her two days ago over the phone: flush them out and shoot them down.

But they're just children, she thought, standing silently with that phone in her hand, watching her head in the mirror above her bed, nodding, always nodding, can't she ever do anything _else_-

They're just children, and maybe they hurt Zell and maybe they will shoot her first if she does not aim faster, but the one Squall left facedown in his oil slick blood was maybe her own age, maybe a little older, and he was the oldest by far, and who makes these choices anyway- who decides that Galbadia deserves this country more, who _says_, dammit-

Duty to your country.

Loyalty to your people.

Step out of line and they cry 'traitor', 'coward', 'turncoat'; your country has done so _much _for you; your government has cared so _greatly_ and you do not just wipe your ass with this, do you hear- you do not just get up and _walk away_.

Someone hammers this into your head the moment you step from civilian sneakers into standard-issue boots, and this is the one thing you never forget, even as everything else frays and unravels inside of you.

Garden flaps its spider-silk ropes down into cities and towns and countrysides all over the world and reels these cobweb lines back up into her titanic metal belly and sometimes the children who are taken up these ropes are seen again, but usually they are not.

But they do try, some of them, to not be forgotten. They were drafted against their will; they owed _nothing_; they would not waste their childhoods inside this giant metal beast that flew in on the breeze and left their mothers weeping in the streets.

The last cadet to desert Garden just wanted to see his mother.

He didn't make it five miles into the desert.

But those cadets…they had a place to run. They had a family to not leave behind.

She never even tried.

You do not run when there are no arms waiting for you.

"Quisty!" Selphie sings from the hallway outside her room.

She tucks the loose strands of her updo carefully behind her ears.

She flattens the stray little piece of her uncooperative left eyebrow.

She begins each day like this, this careful little inspection, this smoothing over of all her flaws, and sometimes when she comes back at night there is blood to wash off her hands, and sometimes there is not, but her dreams cannot tell the difference, and they are full of red, and rhymes, and children who flop like fish in the streets.

* * *

_I…shit…my head…_

_What's that on my face…little specks that touch my cheeks, my lids, my lips-_

_ Snow? _

_ My blink clears some of the fog from my head. _

_Not snow. _

_Snow is not the color of my mother's lipstick. It is not greasy, or warm, or flecked with little black threads of hair. But it falls to earth like snow. It buries the grass, and the trees, and the black-burned bodies around me. _

_ This is snow, in war._

_ I remember…I remember a flash of light, and a sound to split my ears. _

_ I remember that there used to be a guy standing next to me, rifle in hand, cigarette between his lips, and Ward, hissing at him to put the damn thing out- _

_ And then there was a shot. _

_ And another, and another- and I threw myself down and snapped my gun up to my shoulder, and where do I _aim_, I remember thinking- which direction are they coming- and then came the flash of light and the sound to split my ears and the entire earth was just…sucked away, taken out from underneath my feet, and this long long moment of nothing, of being unaware- it was the closest I have come to peace in a long time. _

_ When I come to, the man with the rifle and the cigarette is gone, and so are Ward, and Kiros, and are they part of this snow that is not snow- is this all I have left of them, these slick little pieces that collect on my lashes and my chin-_

_ But, no, they are _here_- there is Kiros' authoritative yell and Ward's booming command and I sit up, I shoulder my rifle, I aim into the woods-_

_ The man with the rifle and the cigarette is limbless at my feet- his eyes stare but they do not see. _

_ This is the other thing about war, how callous it makes you. That guy had a wife who was carrying his first son, and all I can do is lie here, and thank Hyne that it wasn't Ward, or Kiros, or me. _

_I am grateful this man is dead. I am glad his wife will wait for him in vain._

_This is what war does, to nice boys who used to save birds and hand-draw Valentines and wipe their mother's cheeks._

* * *

The voice started up three nights ago.

Sometimes it is Matron's and sometimes it is not.

He lies awake.

He stares at the ceiling and he thinks about how goddamned _cold _the sheets are, and how she lies asleep in her own bed two doors down, and once, you know, his sheets weren't always this way-

But what a long, long fucking time ago that was.

The graveyard, the voice that is maybe Matron's and maybe not reminds him.

The graveyard and what mommy dearest did to you there and how those faces watching from their perches on the wrought-iron fence fucking _laughed_ and laughed, and wouldn't shut _up_- all that goddamned _noise_-

He dug his shovel down deep into the earth with her rag-wrapped corpse beside him, such a tiny fucking doll thing, that rag-wrapped corpse, and he dug, he dug, he fucking _dug so goddamned hard_, but he never cleared that grave, he always had to start over- how many goddamned _times _did he try to bury her-

Not good enough, boy, she told him. Try again. Do _better_.

Stop failing.

Kiss the girl good-night and watch out for the worms, boys- the worms went in the worms went out they'll turn your stomach slimy green until pus pours out like whipping cream-

* * *

_In Deling City there is a carnival that comes once a year. _

_ Usually it shows up right around Halloween, and offers reduced admission to children wrapped in their ghost sheets and their rubber masks, and Kiros and I, every year without fail, we showed up with our costumes and our five carefully-saved gil in sweating hands, and we ran rampant through those tents. _

_ You can bet they earned the hell out of that ten gil. _

_ My favorite was always this one room, this red, red room with a clicking old projector that cast its flickering images all around the walls, that put you right _there _on a distant red planet with the red dust beneath your feet and the stars above your head and the alien cities with their floating palaces and their wine-colored rivers and the musicians playing their strange extraterrestrial instruments. _

_ You could sit there for a thousand years, and never take it in long enough. _

_ Kiros always liked the Maze of Mirrors, but this room had so many _secrets_- you ran to meet those musicians playing their strange extraterrestrial instruments and by the time you reached them they were suddenly women floating in their veil clouds, whirling, dipping, spinning past like ballerinas; and when you reached out to graze one of those long lacy banners streaming in the dry alien wind- it melted away beneath your fingertips, it stretched, it flowed- it was suddenly a field of glass flowers that chimed like bells against one another in the wind. And you bent down to pick a flower and their stems sprouted into towering redwood trees, and ahead of you danced these little constellations of fairy light, and little shadows that darted between the trunks, animals and little purple-skinned dwarves and oakwood women with their waving moss hair-_

_ I loved that room. _

_ From the moment when the first of our neighbors began to put pumpkins in their windows and witches on their front porches, I sat at my window, and I watched, waiting for that circus to roll into town. _

_ This year it's under new management, and it came a month later than usual, and it is still here two months after it arrived, when Kiros and Ward and I are all home on leave. _

_ For old time's sake, Kiros tells me with a smile. _

_ Damned kid still can't get over that Maze of Mirrors. I think he just likes to look at himself that much._

_ So I pay my money -ten gil, this year- and I step into that room and I stand there in the shuddering candle flame light of that projector, watching the red planet come to life all around me, and I feel…I feel so _empty_. _

_ It's not the same. And it's not because I am older, I don't believe anymore, I am not filled with awe, watching the dancers and the musicians and the flowing red-wine rivers-_

_ I was once a boy, standing in this redwood forest. I was once a boy who had not killed men and lost friends and wrote letters home to mothers whose sons would not be making it back, and it _hurts_._

_ That's what always comes after the emptiness: the sensation of being stuffed, of overflowing, of being just too damn _small _to contain everything you feel. _

_ The dancers trail their veils past my nose, hide their kohl-smudged eyes away behind painted fans, and then the musicians sound their funny little wooden flutes, and ten-year-old Laguna- he's in here somewhere, and he wants out, he wants to look, to touch, to _run_, and I'm too old, too tired, too full. _

_ I am twenty-six, and I am too old for carnivals._

_ And maybe you are too, and maybe you're proud of this, of growing up, of moving beyond- but what I would _give_, to have that kid back._

* * *

When he can't sleep, he turns to his sketchpad and his charcoal.

They are tucked carefully away beneath his extra clothes and his knives and the old oil rag he swiped from Garden's garage to keep Hyperion pretty in between stabbings, because this is strictly the kind of shit you keep to yourself.

In Balamb the other kids didn't give two flying fucks about him, and he discovered what a pencil can do, the way it transports you, in between all his pretending to not give a shit.

He wasn't half fucking bad at it.

He used to sit up at night, sometimes just aimlessly scribbling, seeing what emerged out of all that black, sometimes trying to capture a bird, a flower he'd seen that day, the patterns the clouds shaped themselves into outside his window- and stupid little shit that he was, he used to pretend all this black was a portal, another dimension, a door he could step through and swing shut and never look back on. This portal would carry him away, take him home, and maybe she could go with him- maybe her stupid shitty parents who couldn't even recognize what they goddamned had could just go fuck themselves and she'd leave them both, she'd follow behind with a smile, back to Matron, to Cid, to Irvine and Sis and Zell and even Selphie and Squall.

Maybe she'd never leave him again, in this other dimension.

Maybe Matron would still love him.

Maybe, maybe, maybe: what a bunch of shitty little possibilities he stored up inside of himself back then, so goddamned hopefully.

But he escaped through that sketchpad.

He didn't have anywhere else to run, after Zell left him for Garden.

And you know, there was a kind of magic there, in the way he could conjure whole worlds from a smudge here, a streak there, and it reminded him of Matron reading to them before bed, of the way she could so totally fucking _transport _him, with just a few words.

He's too old now, and the magic is gone, but it's still a nice goddamned thought, this stepping through to the other side.

* * *

She tosses and she turns and she cannot get back to sleep.

She can't stop thinking about that small little ball of a bird, on the sand between them.

And the way he _treated _her-

She has never been told that it is all right to grieve, it is ok to _feel_, and this man, this crude, crude man who kills too well, who has set foot inside Garden's library exactly three times, who hurts because he can-

He wiped her face. He sat there beside her on that burning yellow dune until Garden came to take him away, and he let her mourn.

How much is she forgetting?

She has tried so _hard _to let that tire swing go, to wipe it away, smudge it out, but it will not leave, it keeps poking its fragmented little pieces up through her memories and into her dreams and why would she have let him touch her that way- why would she have held him _back_-

She kicks off her covers.

She flips her pillow.

Two doors down, he sleeps, perhaps in his standard-issue sweatpants and his standard-issue shirt, and perhaps in nothing, and oh dear sweet _Hyne_, how can she _think _that?

All _right_.

Sometimes, when he is not being utterly horrible, she wonders what he looks like beneath his uniform. Just a brief little flash of curiosity, mind you, because his shoulders are so very broad and his arms are so very…accentuated, and he _knows _this and so everyone else knows it as well, and why shouldn't she have pondered what the rest of him looks like, every so once in a blue moon?

She glares up at the ceiling.

She really _must _have something better to contemplate, this late at night.

She flips her pillow back over.

She yanks her covers up to her chin.

She shuts her eyes, and there are the boy and the bird, waiting for her, and that tire swing held suspended in his flawless young hands, and scattered across his face is just the lightest frosting of blonde stubble that scrapes her face as he leans in to kiss her-

His hands were not so flawless, when he wiped her face as they sat together on that dune; Garden had already begun to whittle its imperfections into him.

But they were warm hands, and they were gentle, and she tried not to like the way they felt against her cheeks, and if she gropes down through the fog that still obscures all the memories surrounding this one lone recollection that stands out like an island in the mist-

She remembers the way his smile felt, how it stiff-armed her in the gut.

Once Garden dropped her off in the desert with only this one lone bird for her companion, and when they ordered her to kill this one lone companion of hers, she stroked the downy tuft of its little head as it looked up at her, beak open, waiting for its next meal, its latest coo of affection, and she snapped its neck.

To make her tough, Garden said.

To shape her into something better.

To make her see: there is no attachment; there is no love; there is no compassion.

Not when you have been designed to take away.

This is what she does, little Quistis Marae Trepe, who must have once played with dolls and colored outside the lines and danced without understanding how to shape her body through counts of eight: she takes, she breaks, she destroys.

She cried for so long, holding that little mangled body.

And then over the crest of a hill came Seifer Almasy, mean, barbaric Seifer Almasy, who kicked the back of her chair in class, who flicked pencil shavings in her hair and got her in trouble during tests and followed her down the hall to gym each day, imitating the way she walked, and he sat down next to her and clumsily offered her his own bird, and for several eternal moments, she could only look at him.

And he smiled. The sun came out on his face. She had noticed this before, how bright his face shone when he relaxed out of his scowl, his smirk, but how it stuttered her heart, to have it aimed at her: how her pulse became this little hiccupping machine gun inside her, the way it _skipped_-

They came to take him away minutes later, because the whole point was to isolate each student with this one lone companion, and he had ruined it all; they nearly failed her as well, until they saw that little twisted corpse in the dust at her feet.

He complained the whole way back to the truck, had the actual _gall _to tell one of the instructors to shut up, pointed out that he was already on probation and what exactly else could they do to him, and then he looked back over his shoulder, and he winked.

She has never known exactly what to make of him.

Last year on her birthday he broke into the cafeteria and stole a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, her favorite, and even though she threatened, she pleaded, she _insisted _he put it back, he somehow persuaded her to help him eat the whole thing, outside in the quad after curfew.

Twice the patrols swept the beams of their lights in little searching white fingers over the bench he had commandeered while they lay huddled shoulder to shoulder underneath it, he laughing into the crook of his arm, she utterly terrified -the _marks _this was going to put on her record!- and afterward he just rolled right out from beneath that bench and told her to take the stick from her ass, and jammed another spoonful into her mouth when she opened it to explain to him precisely where it was she was going to transfer that stick.

The next day, he doodled anatomically-correct men all over the screen of her classroom computer, and got her three days detention.

And he winked in exactly the same way, and put his feet up on his desk, and for so long she pondered whether it was worth the extra day of detention, to jam her pen through his eye.

The moon paints its bright white searchlight over her bed, and she kicks off her covers.

She flips her pillow, once, again, again.

* * *

At the back of the hotel is a little patch of grass which has not yet died, and this is where she lies down to watch the stars, hugging her coat around her.

Her razor breath cuts up her throat and scores her lungs, but she doesn't mind.

This is being alive, this way winter forces its knives between her lips and down into her chest.

She blows long puffs of cigarette exhalations into the sky.

All around her, the world lies quiet in its winter grave, powdered white, tinted brown.

The stars are so clear, from here.

It was Irvine who taught her how to trace their forms, how to piece them together into big dippers and fish hooks and northern crosses, and maybe it is the way she thinks about him now that conjures him out of the arctic air, rifle over his shoulder.

"Kinda' early to be out here, ain't it?"

She smiles and crosses her boots at the ankles. "It's quiet. It's nice."

"You mean, Dincht ain't here and Seifer ain't awake yet." He settles down beside her on the grass, laying Exeter across his thighs.

"What are you doing up so early?" she asks him as he eases back next to her in the grass, folding one arm behind his head.

"Ah, couldn't sleep. Been thinking. Know I don't need to do that, face as pretty as mine, but can't help it sometimes."

She smiles again, and for several long minutes, they lie together in the grass, not speaking, breathing their soft cotton breaths, and these are the moments she would like to freeze, to keep forever, these in-between minutes where there are no bombs or bullets or skies raining death.

This is what it must be like, to live on the other side. To _live_, period.

She has only ever practiced dying.

"Quisty," he says quietly, drawing out the syllables of her name, blowing them in overlapping rings up toward the stars.

She turns her face cheek down into the grass to look at him. "Mmm?"

"That Laguna guy…" he trails off, folds his other arm up behind his head, starts again. "You ever…you ever feel the way he does sometimes?"

To hope in vain, to feel the weight of all her years set like lead-weight hands on her chest-

She understands.

Once she was a girl, and she tries so very very hard to forget this, but maybe once she too enjoyed carnivals- maybe once she visited the red red room and its chiming bell-glass flowers and its towering alien cities and maybe she could think of nothing worse than letting this all go, of stepping back beyond the tent flap.

Maybe once she ran just to run, without worrying about infractions or propriety or discipline.

"I was a nice kid too, you know, just like him," he says, and she doesn't ask him how he knows this, how he remembers.

"I know," she says softly.

He blows more of those overlapping rings up toward the stars. "I remember this one kid in weapons class…he found out his friend was just killed on a mission while we were sparring. They made the announcement right as I hit the guy in the face…and he just collapsed. Thought at first I hit him too hard, but then he just started sobbing, and I knew I hadn't hit him _that _hard, and I realized that it wasn't me at all, it was that announcement, and all I could do was stand there, trying to figure out what the hell to do, and he just…he kept crying. Snot runnin' everywhere, drool- everything just came pouring out of this kid. You're not supposed to care that much, course, so they took him away. They sent him out into the desert to fight monsters for a week, and I don't know what else they did to him, but I never saw him cry again, not even when this other kid I always saw him hanging around in the cafeteria keeled over in the library one day from some rare reaction to the Guardian Force he'd junctioned." He swallows, works his arms beneath his head. She watches him flex his fingers, fold them down into fists. "And you know…sometimes I'm so scared, because if I lost either one of those assholes, I'd lose my shit too. And then they'd take me away. And I don't want them to remake me, Quisty. Maybe I think too much before I pull the trigger and maybe I wanna' puke, watchin' all those videos they make us sit through, but if they take that away, I've got nothin' left. That kid's dead." His voice cracks very slightly.

She wonders if she has ever had one of those children inside of her. Is there some other Quistis curled up within her, who loves without fear and lives without boundaries, who paints herself into other watercolor lives, who writes herself into new worlds?

She would like to meet that Quistis.

She would like to curl up inside her, for just one day.

She looks up into the sky.

"I don't think that will ever happen to you, Irvine."

He breathes quietly in and out. "It's what they do, Quistis. They stomp until we're flat."

But they have stomped, and stomped, and they have never crushed him down.

They have never ironed him smooth.

"I still think you're that boy, even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes," she tells him quietly. "I think you will never stop caring. And I think…I think that's nice."

She listens to him breathing, hears the soft dry whispering of him turning his head to look across the grass toward her. "The thing about Laguna, whoever he is, is that he still cares. He never stops caring, through everything he does. If he did, it wouldn't hurt so much."

And the thing about hurting-

It's how you know you are still alive. When life has burned you to a third degree crispness, when you see but do not feel- that's what Garden is trying to accomplish. A perfect soldier obeys without question; a perfect soldier kills without compunction.

She has mastered all the steps, but she has never really learned the dance, the way it flows together, how one part ripples seamlessly into the next and the next beyond that.

She wears the mask, but it itches, it sticks to her sweating skin, it makes her feel too hot, too stifled, too uncomfortable.

But she never takes it off.

Garden took her in when the parents she cannot remember didn't want her, and Garden wants her to wear this mask until she becomes it, to dance this dance until she is no longer a separate entity, until its rhythm is her body or her body is its rhythm.

She tries, because if she can't be loved, she can at least be accomplished.

Quistis Trepe conquered Blue Magic in two years; Quistis Trepe made SeeD in four; Quistis Trepe gets the job done; Quistis Trepe never turns down a mission.

Quistis Trepe has no lover, no mother, no brother.

She has a tidy closet, and an organized desk, and shoes stacked in color-coordinated rows.

She has a memory of a boy who felt something for her once, who liked the way she was before.

Sometimes memories, they make such a knot in your throat.

They tie themselves so tightly up inside you that it is a struggle just to breathe past them, and this is what she does now, carefully, working the sharp winter air slowly down past this lump.

She wanted to forget the swing, and his hands, and the smell of summer and the taste of root beer. She wanted so _badly _to pretend this was merely a figment of her imagination, that she never existed before Garden, that she never had anything before Garden, but she _remembers_, and maybe she can forget again one day, but not this day.

Once upon a time, a boy kissed her.

A boy held her face like it was fragile glass beneath his fingers, that precious, and maybe it was just Seifer Almasy, maybe it was just a fleeting moment, or a dare, but he held her and she gripped him back and they shared one breath, and to be that close to someone, without a garrote around their throat-

She shuts her eyes.

She was once a girl who had not killed men and lost friends and written names in notebooks.

"You cold?" he asks softly, and she opens her eyes just a sliver.

He smiles and holds open his duster, and she inches her way across the grass toward him, to be enfolded away inside this familiar coat with him lying warm beside her.

He tucks his arm beneath her head.

It is so quiet, and the stars are so clear.

And wrapped in him, in this familiar coat, she thinks that this family that does not call, that dropped her off in Garden's polished halls to die young-

They can go to hell.

He points toward the sky with his free arm. "There's 'Pubic', according to Dincht."

"Puppis?"

"Yeah, the idiot never gets it right, so eventually one day I just gave up on correcting him. Think he probably does it on purpose. Kinda' embarrassing though, when your friend's telling all the guys in the locker room about how you showed him the pubic part of the sky. Think he regretted it, though, when Seifer asked him if 'sky' was a nickname for my asshole, and the pubic part was his. That's when they got into it and ended up crashing through the locker room door out into the hallway-"

"And I showed up to see what all the noise was, right about when Seifer was trying to bounce Zell's head off the wall and Zell reached back for some leverage, and came away with Seifer's towel in his hand."

His arm bounces beneath her as he laughs. "And instead a' bookin' it back into the locker room, like any normal man with any humility would have, he just stood there and kept trying to bounce Dincht's head off the wall, while Dincht screamed like a little girl and announced to the whole hallway that Seifer's wang was about to touch him and he'd give anyone who helped him thirty gil-forty for assisted suicide, in the instance that Seifer's wang _did _touch him. Poor guy. Martial artist expert or not, kinda' hard to fight off a naked guy. Hard to work your techniques when you're doing everything you can not to touch the guy."

"And then Seifer turned around and saw me standing there with my mouth hanging open and took my phone out of my hand and snapped a picture. He said it would last longer."

"Well, in his defense, you_ were _the one with your phone already out, Quisty."

"I was already talking to someone on it when I came to see what was going on!"

She can hear the smile in his voice. "So did you keep the picture?"

"No!"

"I think you're blushin'."

She is most certainly _not_. "I didn't even look at it. I deleted it as soon as he handed me my phone back."

"How many other students at Garden do you think have had to scrub the cafeteria floors for flashin' their dong in public?"

She rolls her eyes. "He didn't even do it. I caught him blackmailing Zell into doing it for him. I don't know what he had on him, but most of his punishment consisted of him sitting on one of the tables smirking while poor Zell cleaned the whole building."

His arm bounces beneath her again.

For a long moment they lie staring at the sky, and it is amazing, how much heat a human body can hold, how much warmer she feels here, on this stiff winter ground, than she ever did tossing and turning in her plush chocobo-feather bed.

"Seifer ain't so bad," Irvine says, tipping his head down to rest the brim of his hat against her cheek. "He only picks on the people he likes, you know."

"Then he must be madly in love with me," she says dryly.

The smile is still in his voice.

"Must be."

* * *

_Writing is a thing to break a dam._

_ I leave the carnival for the house that used to belong to my mom, and for the longest time I sit at the empty kitchen table, pen in hand, boots up (she woulda' killed me for that, once), and what I start out writing on this little yellow legal pad I found in one of the kitchen drawers is just a simple little love story, the oldest tale man has ever told: Boy meets girl, is overwhelmed by her charms, trips over his own damn feet trying to impress her. _

_ You can guess what the girl does for a living, and the name the boy stammers out before fleeing back to his regular table and his laughing asshole friends. _

_ And this is where I put my pen down. _

_ I have never stopped thinking about Julia, not every moment I get just a quiet second to myself, a microscopic minute in which I am not remembering how to live._

_ But love… _

_ How can a man like me love, when I have done the things I've done? You can't…you can't just pound your rifle all the way through a man's skull until you reach his brain, and then go home and hold some woman in your arms. You can't stroke her hair and kiss her neck and really let yourself _feel_, when the boots you left behind next to the front door are still caked with all the little pieces of this skull you hammered your rifle all the way through. _

_ Write what you know, right? _

_ So I start over. _

_ I tell about a boy who left home with a rifle over his shoulder, who was full of so many good things when he joined up. _

_ His first firefight: the bright orange stars of the muzzle flares and the way he crouched down in his hole, so damn _scared_, how he just wanted to go _home_, to see his mom, to sit at his desk with his pencil and his imagination and his innocence. _

_ The first time he ever killed a man. Not with some sights between him and his target, not with a hundred yards between them, too far to feel the backsplash, too far to smell the man's shit dripping down his ankles, but man to man: hand to hand._

_ He took a knife, and he pushed it in to the hilt._

Imagine _that: the elastic skin, stretching around this blade you push in to the hilt, the way it gives, stretches, and the guy _flails_, tries to push you away, speaks in tiny red spit bubbles that smear themselves down your cheeks, your nose, you are that close. You smell his coffee breath and his unwashed uniform and you're too scared to push that blade in farther, you're too scared to _not _push that blade in farther, because what if he finishes you first- what if there is still enough left in him to draw his own knife, to stick it between your ribs- what if it finds your heart and you never see your _mom _again- what if they take you home in one of those long horrible boxes with their folded wax dolls-_

_ And now you pull your knife, and you stick him again, again, _again_, you just keep _hacking_- you're not behind this at all anymore, it's _not you how could it be you_-_

_But it _is_, dammit, it's your hands plunging the knife and your heart still beating and your cheeks feeling the stinging needle droplets of all this blood you take, but if it wasn't him it was _you_, can you understand that, mom? Can you please try to understand that- can you still love your son with the pieces of skull on his boots and the blood in dry brown half-moons under his fingernails and the little red raindrops he can never quite scrub out of his stubble-_

_And the dam breaks. _

_They never go quietly, do they?_

_I lay my head down on the table and cry for so damn long, in this house that used to belong to my mom. _

_She was proud of me. _

_She was proud of me and I've given away everything she had to brag about._

* * *

Deep breaths, Zone.

No one is going to recognize you, Zone.

He keeps his hat pulled low and his eyes down, and he walks with his hands in his pockets toward the train station.

His _stomach_.

_You just go forward_, Watts used to tell him.

That was when he was still here to walk beside him, to not let him go alone.

Oh Hyne, oh Hyne, _breathe_-

He's clinging by a thread here, Watts, man.

Freedom…it's so _pricey_.

How far are you willing to go for it? Watts used to ask them. Our fathers fought, and we carry on, and how long are we going to keep doing this- do we pass this revolution along to our kids, our grandkids, to their grandkids- do we _give up_, because we are tired, because we have been fighting for so long, and we want to go back to our 40" TVs and our gaming systems and our school dances?

No, he told them.

Not me.

We are still here, because we're doing something right. And if we don't let go, if we keep pushing, if we never stop- one day we're going to roll right over them. And I hope it's before my kids have to pick up a gun, and I hope it's before your kids learn how to trigger a car bomb, but we'll never know, if we don't _try_.

Not me either, he decided. This is _my _town and they can't have it, and I will _always _fight, I will never _stop_.

And then they heaved Watts' body from the train and dumped him like trash in the woods and he stopped knowing why it was worth it.

He remembered his empty home, and his girlfriend's sightless staring eyes, and the way Watts picked him up from these tragedies and brushed him off and never let him look back.

And now he walks past the soldiers alone. He takes their drill bit eyes through the gut without Watts' friendly smile to throw them off, and his water knees tremble so hard he can barely hold himself up, and _why _-that's all he wants to know- how _come_, you son of a _bitch_?

There is only one figure still left on the platform, silhouetted in sunset, bag at her feet, and as he threads his way so carefully -Hyne, please don't let them _know_- between those soldiers, flexing his sweaty shaking hands inside his pockets, she turns to him, and she smiles.

She picks up her bag.

He waits until he has glued his voice back together along the seams.

"Are you Rinoa?"

* * *

**A/N: There really is a video of people going apeshit over some phones. It was taken at a Wal-Mart, in which state I can't remember, but it was during Black Friday and it was utterly _nuts_ the way these people went at each other. It's pretty frightening how something like a big sale on _phones_, of all things, can reduce human beings to animals. **

**The red carnival room was inspired by Bradbury's image of Mars in 'The Martian Chronicles', or at least the city and the river and the instruments were. The rest is just random stuff from my brain.**

**Also, we'll see Laguna return to being an awkward loveable goofball at some point, but the boy's got some issues to work out right now. His battle scenes are based on the trench warfare of WWI.**


	15. Interlude Seven

**A/N: So I finished the Timber section today. I've got a bit of plot to unravel back at Garden, and then on to the sorceress mission and the end of part/disc one. We are moving right along; I'm excited. **

* * *

_Dear Quisty,_

_ That market you're always whining about is back in town again. Why don't you just take the train down here? I know you want to see me. It's ok. I understand. I mean, you kissed me while I was in Deling City, so it's pretty obvious that you like me. _

_ They've got more books,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

I _kissed _you_? That isn't how I remember it. _

_ I can't just get on a train to Balamb, Seifer. What would I tell my parents? That I'm going to see some boy? I can't do that. I would love to visit the market, and the old bookstore you were telling me about, but they'd never let me go without them, and they're too busy to come. _

_ Could you see if you could find a copy of _If on a Winter's Night a Traveler_ by Italo Calvino at the market, please, since I can't come look myself? It's an older book, and not very well-known, so none of the bookstores in town have a copy. The library does, but someone checked it out years ago and never returned it. _

_ Is there something from Deling City that you want? Maybe we could do a gift exchange. _

_ How…how have you been? Have you heard from Zell since he left?_

_ We're studying Centran history in school right now. It's interesting. I wish I had a time machine, so I could go back and see all that history play itself out right in front of my eyes. _

_ If you could go anywhere, during any time period, where would you go?_

_ I'll talk to you next time,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I just want one thing from Deling City. _

_ I couldn't find your book. I looked at the library too but the lady said she didn't have it and wasn't sure if she could find a copy to order in. She said she'll let me know if she finds one. _

_ Zell's mom hasn't even heard from him. I think there's some kinda' weird mind control stuff going on at Garden or something- think I'm gonna bust him out. He's too stupid to be there without me, anyway. He'll probably get killed without someone smart like me to watch out for him. _

_ Centran history's boring. We already covered all that and I hated it. Who wants to sit around and read about some stupid old guys that kept killing each other because they all wanted control of the kingdom? Where were all their knights? If they'd just come riding in, they would have kicked everyone's ass and ridden off with a couple of princesses, and then everybody'd see how dumb they were being, and they'd give the kingdom over to someone who wasn't stupid so he could be in control of it. I think they would have picked me, if I'd been alive back then. _

_ If I could go back in time, I'd go back to Matron and Cid's, and I'd get rid of the graveyard, and I'd give Squall the biggest wedgie he ever got, just to see him change his face for once._

_ You know you want to see me,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ What do you want from Deling City? I can check the shops and see if they have it. We have a lot of them here, especially down the main strip- my mother goes shopping a lot and sometimes she lets me come along. I pass a couple of stores on my way home from school as well. It's close enough that I can walk, since both my parents work late and don't have time to pick me up. _

_ I don't think anyone would just hand a kingdom over to a thirteen-year-old boy, Seifer. The only time there were ever rulers that young was because they were born into it, and nobody really had a choice, and most of them were killed off young, or manipulated by a family member, or married off to someone much older who made all their choices for them. I'd hate that, never having a choice. What do you think it was like for them, trapped in their palace all day, watching the whole world go by but never really getting to touch it?_

_ I feel like that sometimes. I get to look out, but no one sees in. _

_ Anyway. I hope Zell's all right. I hope you hear from him soon. And what graveyard are you talking about? There wasn't a graveyard anywhere near Matron and Cid's._

_ Let me know what you're looking for._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I was talking about YOU, stupid. I don't like the girls here; they're dumb. You're a lot more interesting to talk to, even if you won't shut up about your books and you won't stop telling me what to do and you try and pretend like you didn't kiss me. _

_ The graveyard…the graveyard was there after all of you were gone. Matron made me go there when she was punishing me. _

_ Why do grown-ups even have kids, if they're just going to ignore them? Aren't they supposed to love them, even if they're bad? _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I DIDN'T kiss you. You initiated it. And you could have ASKED first, you know. That's what a gentleman would have done._

_ Seifer, what are you talking about? Why would Matron make you sit in a graveyard to punish you?_

_ Seifer, Matron DID love you. No matter what you did, or how badly you acted; even if she sent you away, even if she gave you up to someone else, she loved you. She always loved you. Whatever her reason for sending you away was, it wasn't you. Maybe she was sick? I haven't talked to her in a while- maybe she's not well and she just wasn't able to care for you anymore. Maybe she and Cid couldn't afford to any longer, and they wanted you to have a better life, with someone who could give you what they thought you deserved. _

_ Matron loved you, and I'm still here, talking with you, aren't I? It doesn't matter what the new kids think of you, or if the lady who runs your orphanage doesn't have any time for you- I'm listening, if you need me too. We can do that for each other, ok? So we don't have to be lonely anymore. I always forget how lonely I am, when one of your letters shows up. _

_ Sincerely, _

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ Jeez, what a bunch of sappy crap, Quisty. You're such a girl sometimes._

_ It's because you're thinking about what it was like kissing me huh,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I have not ONCE thought about kissing you since it happened. It wasn't even that good. In fact, I'm pretty sure you did it wrong. It felt different when Ryson Gibley kissed me. _

_ Hyne you are so CONCEITED,_

_ Quistis _

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ You let some other guy kiss you?! What the HELL, Quisty? I didn't know you were one of THOSE girls. How many guys have you let kiss you?!_

_ It doesn't matter because none of them were better than me and you KNOW it,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ What do you mean, one of 'THOSE' girls? What are you trying to imply, you jerk?_

_ I kissed ONE boy at school, and only then because he took me by surprise behind the gym one day. It was disgusting. I pushed him away, and then he tried to do it again, and I punched him in the eye. I don't just go around kissing boys, Seifer. I wouldn't have kissed you either, if you hadn't started it. _

_ You know, we could have had a nice conversation- I was trying to be nice to you. It's not very easy to do that, but I was TRYING, Seifer. Why do you have to ruin it?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ You should punch any guys who try to kiss you. Except me. _

_ Look…I'm glad you still write to me. Don't be mad, ok?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ Hyne, I HATE when you do that. It's so hard to stay mad at you sometimes._

_ I'm sorry about what I said. I don't think you were bad at it. It was…it was very nice. I wasn't lying when I said it was disgusting, kissing Ryson, but it was different with you. It felt a lot…better. Don't go and get a big head about it- I'm sure it was just a fluke. _

_ I'm glad you still write to me too, Seifer. Even if I do sometimes wish we were back at Matron and Cid's so I could bury you in the sand and wait for the tide to come in._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I piss you off cause you're cute when you're mad._

_ And it wasn't a fluke. You want me to do it again? I'll prove it._

_ That's what you wanted all along isn't it,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ Do you think we'll ever actually see each other again? I can't get down to Balamb; you can only come to Deling City on school trips. I'm sure whatever your neighbor pays you, it isn't enough for a train ticket. _

_ Sometimes I wish the other children were closer. I know Zell's at Garden now, but if I could see Squall or Selphie or Irvine or Sis again…it would just be nice, to know what happened to them, you know? I miss them. _

_ I wish we were all together again. Nobody ignored me at Matron and Cid's. My new parents aren't mean, but I don't think they really like me much. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. _

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think your new parents are shitheads. _

_ You said your dad's a politician, so aren't you like rich or something? Why don't you just buy a train ticket?_

_ Do it,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I already told you, I can't just leave. Yes, my mother and father could easily afford it, but they're not going to let me go off to Balamb by myself, and they don't have any interest in visiting. Maybe someday, years from now, when we can drive…maybe we could visit each other then. Do you think you'll still remember me then, when we're sixteen or so? I know I'll still remember you._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I don't want to wait that long. I want to see you now. And of course I'm still going to remember you, stupid. I already said all the other girls here are dumb, didn't I? Why would I want any of them? _

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ It's not just other girls- what if you go off to Garden too? What if you're drafted, or the lady who runs the orphanage sends you, or you decide to go so Zell won't be alone? He was so sensitive sometimes; I have to wonder how he's doing there, in a place like that. _

_ Do you think it's horrible? Garden, I mean? I can't imagine _wanting _to join up. You have to do everything they say, and I read that at least 50% of the kids who are drafted never make it home. Casualty rates are really high for the SeeD program. I can't imagine waking up every morning, wondering if I'm going to die. Can you? _

_ What do you want to do, when you grow up? I'd like to be a teacher. Literature, I think. Maybe ancient Centran Literature- I could study the language and become an expert on it, and then some prestigious university would hire me to translate all the old books sitting around in libraries that are hardly ever read -do you think books ever get lonely too?- and we could understand so much more about their culture. I'd like that._

_ What about you?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ If they draft me, I won't go. They can't tell ME what to do. Like I said, I'm gonna bust Zell outta there, and we're gonna highjack the train and come see you, and the three of us will run away and go live in the woods and stuff. Zell won't want to leave his mom, but if we can find one of those candy houses like in the story Matron read us when we were little, he'll stay with us. I'll beat up the witch and throw her in the oven before she can eat us, and then we can just live on candy forever, and once in a while we can go into town and get you some books, and we'll go down to the harbor and steal the fishermen's tackle boxes, and play with that dog, and it won't matter if your new parents are dumb and don't know that you're the best daughter they could have gotten from any stupid crummy orphanage around here._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I'd like that. Although that much candy is detrimental to the health of the teeth, and has the potential to lead to Type 2 Diabetes, which is a medical condition where the body doesn't produce enough insulin, or the cells ignore the insulin which has been produced. It can lead to severe complications, which can include eventual blindness and amputation of the limbs. I bet the witch had diabetes. _

_ If Garden drafts you, you won't have a choice. Will you still write to me, if you have to go there? _

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ I don't think the witch actually ate the candy, so she was probably fine. She had the house so she could lure in kids, remember? Do you think you can catch diabetes from eating kids? _

_ I'm telling you, they're not gonna draft ME. I'm not gonna do what they say. I never did what Matron or Cid said either, and I liked them- they didn't beat me for not saluting right._

_ I don't know if they actually beat you for not saluting right, I'm just assuming. They probably do. They tell lots of stories about Garden at my school, like every time you see some kid on the news who's missing, it's cause Garden kidnaps them and keeps them locked up in the basement until they're too scared to try and run away, and then they start training them how to kill people. If you're stupid or you don't learn very fast or you're too much of a pussy to kill people the way you're supposed to, they kill you instead._

_ I don't know why Zell wanted to go. He said it was cause of his grandpa and he wanted to be a hero like him and he wanted me to go with him, but I said no, cause I can kill the bad guys just fine without Garden. _

_ Would you keep writing to ME, if Garden drafted you?_

_ I think you would,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ I've asked myself before, if I would go if I were called. I want to believe that I would refuse, that I would resist, that they couldn't make me do it, but how many times do you ever hear about kids getting free, once Garden has them? Do you think they're just too scared to try, or do you think Garden recaptures them before they can make it home? _

_ Do you really think they kill kids, just for trying to go home? _

_ What kind of people do you think run a place like that? I can't imagine the kind of person who would bring children up to be soldiers. I'm glad at least, even if it wasn't for very long, that we had Matron and Cid, to show us what it was like to be loved. _

_ I hope the other kids went to good homes. I hope they were adopted by people who love them. It sounds like Zell was- I'm glad. He was always so nice. _

_ No matter what happens, I won't stop writing, Seifer, I promise. Even when we grow up, even if we move on and have different friends and get married, even when we're old, really old, with grandchildren, I'll still be here, listening. So just remember that, ok?_

_ I know you're lonely. I know you try really hard to not be; I know you try really hard to keep that from people, to not let them see that you have feelings, but I know you do, and I know you were hurt by what Matron did. I know you're mad that Zell left. I'm sorry she hurt you and I'm sorry Zell left and I'm sorry you didn't get the kind of home you wanted, Seifer. _

_ I'm sorry neither one of us did._

_ But it's ok as long as we have someone to talk to, isn't it?_

_ Don't ruin it this time,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ Ok. _

_ I'll keep writing too. Even if you get all ugly and your boobs start to sag and you can't see very well anymore so when you try to hit me in the back of the head like you used to do sometimes at the orphanage you hit me in the dick instead._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ If I tell you something, promise you won't laugh, or say something mean?_

_ Sincerely,_

_ Quistis_

* * *

_ Dear Quisty,_

_ What? I promise. I swear. Unless it's something dumb like it wasn't really Zell who peed the bed that one time it was you. Or if it was your underwear that flew off the windowsill where Matron hung them to dry and landed on Squall's face. I'd laugh at that._

_ Sincerely,_

_ Seifer_

* * *

_ Dear Seifer,_

_ It's, well, I've started this letter many times, trying to figure out exactly how to phrase what I want to say, but I never know how. I've read so many books, I've seen so many movies, I've seen so many people experiencing exactly this, but it's hard to put into words. _

_ I suppose I should just say it. _

_ It's stupid. _

_ Philip Pulfrey said, 'Love is no respecter of age or practicality. Neither morality: unabashed. She enters where she will, unheeding that her immortal fires burn up human hearts.' _

_That was the poem that made the most sense to me when it comes to love, mostly because it _doesn't _make sense. But I suppose that's the whole point, isn't it? _

_What I'm trying to say…is that I love you._

_Sincerely,_

_Quistis_

* * *

For days, for decades, for _centuries_, she waits, and he never writes her back.


	16. Chapter Eight

**A/N: So I've had a busy last couple of weeks/weekends and next weekend I will be hitting the road for a week, and though I will have my laptop with me, I don't know how much time I will be able to devote to writing and I have no idea whether I will have any internet access. So bearing that in mind, I thought I'd throw this up for you guys now so you have something before I head off on my trip. Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed/followed/favorited, and I hope you enjoy.**

* * *

**Chapter** **Eight**

Timber

"We need to start with the SeeDs. We're not going to get anywhere while we're here."

"Yeah, sure- we'll just take out a bunch of highly-trained super soldiers without breaking a sweat. It's gone really well so far."

"Don't roll your eyes at me, Zone. We take 'em out one by one- isolate them, take them by surprise, maybe try and use them against each other. There are two girls in the group- maybe the guys are banging them and we can take one or both of them prisoner and lure in the rest."

"You don't take a SeeD prisoner."

They take you prisoner.

But Watts already found that out the hard way, didn't he?

"Stop fucking interrupting me. The point is, we need to find some way to separate them, to make them easier targets. We can't go head to head with them, obviously, but Zac says he saw one of them get taken out on a stretcher last week, which pisses me off- I thought I killed him when we moved in on Deling. Saw him drop. The blonde bitch was crouching over him for a while with some tall blonde guy- bitch must have healed him. You know, it's funny- I saw her up close a few days ago, in town, and she looks like a fucking librarian. I thought, if I deck the bitch right now, will she cry? She doesn't look like much."

"I wouldn't deck any of them, if you want to, you know, not die."

"One on one, none of that cocksucking magic bullshit, I bet I could take her."

"Ok, Viv."

"Anyway, they're down one at least. So we wait for one of them to head into town- they're scoping the place out, trying to figure out who's helping us, who knows where we're hiding- get them off somewhere alone, and we jump them. Kill them quietly, then-"

"Rinoa knows one of the guys. The tall blonde one? His name's Seifer. She used to date him. We can use her to-"

"Are you fucking kidding _me_? That dumb little bitch doesn't know her head from her ass. Just because she put the guy's cock in her mouth at some point doesn't mean she's useful. How do you even know you can trust her, you idiot? She's from Galbadia."

"Watts found her."

"Watts wasn't infallible, Zone. That's pretty obvious."

You take grief, and you set it down across a pair of shoulders and they sag, they bend, they're not strong enough to take the burden. Hit the gym three hours a day, practice your rows and your shoulder presses and your clean and jerks until you puke, and they're never strong enough.

They will never be strong enough.

But you take anger, and you plug a man into it. He is electrified, fortified; he stands up straight; he charges blindly into battle without his rifle, his bomb, his knife; he never feels the fear.

"Shut _up_," he snaps.

And for just a moment, she does.

This woman who carries guns beneath her jacket and knives in her boots, who was sexually assaulted by Gavin Lunth their freshman year and came to school the next day with baseball bat in hand to send him splintered and bleeding and disfigured off to the hospital, barely alive- she snaps her gaping guppy mouth shut and stands there staring at him, dumbly blinking.

She sighs. "Look…I know he was…" She looks down at her boots.

He doesn't want to _talk _about it.

Watts was all he had left.

Watts was the string by which he was dangling, and those SeeDs came in, and they cut him loose, and now he's just waiting to hit bottom, but the fall's just so damn _endless_.

"I'm ok," he says quietly, but his face shows the lie, and his shaking hands clenched tightly out in front of him confirm it, and for a moment they can both only stand here, looking at one another.

"Let's just put a couple of people down in the town square, see what they're up to. Me and Gage can handle it."

"Ok."

"If I get the chance, I'm taking one of them out."

"Ok."

"That's it? That's all you're going to say?"

"Don't get killed. Don't lead any of them back here."

"Fuck it. Do you know how useless you've been, since Watts died? Pick your goddamned balls back up. You weren't the only one who _fucking _lost him, you know. If you keep wallowing in it like a goddamned pussy, you're going to get killed."

Then he'll _get killed_.

Isn't that all that's left for any of them?

"Look, we can _do _this. But we need you with us, Zone. If we can take out those SeeDs, they're going to look at us in a whole new light. They're going to start getting nervous, start taking us seriously- if we can draw enough attention, make a big enough splash, Esthar might come in and help us out again. They did that back when our dads started all of this."

"We lost last time, even with them helping us."

"So what? We keep trying, until we push the fuckers out of here. What else are we supposed to do? Give up and die?"

He has nothing to come home to. He is going to keep pushing forward because Watts told him to, because his father would have wanted him to, because there are so many faces looking to him for guidance, for a reason to _believe_, but when this is all over, when he's pulled his last pin and fired his last shot and knifed his last soldier, he will be dead, or he will be alone.

He will be crushed beneath the weight of grave dirt, or compressed underneath the silence of all the people who are no longer here.

He will lie without speaking in his tomb of white walls and empty couches, or his crypt of earth and wood.

"We keep trying," he says quietly.

His father chose freedom, and he took up the cry, and once you've started down the slope you do not stumble your way back up it, and it's not _fair_, but didn't he _know _that- didn't he know that when the soldiers marched through town with his father in their hands and their guns in his back; didn't he know that when Kyler Sikes turned to him with a smile, pistol in his hands, and vanished in a thundering beehive of little gray wasps that broke him into pieces and spilled him still smiling into the leaves-

Didn't he _know that _when his girlfriend -when she- when they- _Hyne _did they _have _to- she never _did anything_- she wasn't even a _part of any of it_-

Viv would have pounded their front teeth down their throats until they vomited them back up in slivers, but Em was so _nice_, and she never even had a chance: She brought him running with her screams and he still remembers how he got there too late, how two of them held her in place while the third zipped himself back up, and if he'd had Viv's bat in his hand, if could have swung, and swung, and never stopped swinging- if he could have broken them into kindling pieces and thrown their remains shrieking into the street -"See what you get, _fuckers_!"- if he could have just _done something_-

Viv flicks his jaw. "Chin up, asshole, ok? They're not going to get us."

* * *

But six hours later, she is back, and she is alone.

She washes Gage's blood from her hands and sits with her boots on Ora Hunter's lemon-polished kitchen table, field-stripping her rifle, putting it back together, breaking it down, building it up.

He wonders, sometimes, who she used to be before.

You burn your past to ash when you choose to fight. The old you? Dead. You liked to sing, to write, to watch old movies on rainy days, to plug yourself into your favorite band's latest album and lose yourself in their rhythms, their rhymes?

Not anymore.

He was in a choir.

He studied languages.

He slept until noon and made pancakes on Sundays and cheated at Triple Triad, and do you know what he does now?

He counts bullets.

He draws pictures in mud, little impermanent battle plans that will be washed away when the clouds come out; he buries classmates and he watches his family be carried away like trash and he sits in strangers' basements hoping that they will not tell, that they do not break.

And she?

She came to him fighting.

The girl who burns.

Someone taught her how to hate and she is consumed by this loathing, eaten up in its flames, but his mother always told him that anger is a shell, a shield, and it is put up by those who are afraid, who break so easily and don't want anyone to see.

They wrap it all around themselves, because they cannot stand the thought of leaking.

She does not look at him.

He leaves her to her rifle.

* * *

A bomb is a thing of science, of cables and chemicals and countdowns, but the way it reaches down inside a person, and pulls their most basic instincts up into the light is a conjuring, a magician pulling the rabbit from his hat with a flourish.

The car flings its rubber wheels and its plastic casings and its steel fenders into the crowd, wings them up over the heads of the screaming pack, falls in a fine gray snowfall into her lashes, and she doesn't see Selphie, or Seifer-

The smoke and the screaming and _where is her damn whip_, her pistol-

The animal rush of the crowd around her shoves her back, forward, jostles her from side to side, and she shoves back, she forces her way against this current tugging her from all different directions, she rolls over one shoulder to land in the wet brown weeds beside a butcher's shop-

The _stink_-

The three bodies in their shredded blue uniforms, lying in a constellation of hands, of arms, of feet that are no longer attached-

She has no weapons.

They have been swept away in the crowd, pulled from her hand and her belt by the force of the explosion, the unrelenting surge of the townspeople with their blind beast panic-

Seifer was right across the street, just a few feet away, Selphie beside him, and _where are they_-

A rattle of gunfire.

A thundering of boots, a clicking of safeties, a scattering of soldiers-

A burst of orange from the roof across the street, a single firefly signal, off, on, off again- the bursting of the bullets shattering windows, carving wood, jerking the soldiers about in their awkward puppet dances-

And then she sees him, rising through all the smoke with his broad shoulders and his soot-smudged face, Hyperion over his shoulder, his eyes finding hers, holding them with a smile, because she is all right, they are _both _all right-

And then the second bomb blows, and it is right beside him, and it rolls its white, white fingers down over the street, and she sees nothing more.

* * *

Sometimes survival, it just comes down to a little fucking luck.

He's standing just a few feet away from the second car when it blows, and before he's even quite sure what the hell has just happened, he is facedown in the street, mouth stinging, ears ringing, one hand torn to shit, the left leg of his pants ripped to his knee, and what the goddamned _fuck_-

Someone's getting killed.

There's a lot of goddamned warmth, and wetness, mostly leaking from his mouth and his nose and his ears, and the fucking _ringing_- it just keeps going, it will not stop- he's been trapped underwater, pinned there in place, all the shouts and the screams and the firecracker pops of the guns so fucking far away-

And this hand reaches down through all these underwater layers, and touches his shoulder, and he breathes mud and blood and all the little pieces of the people who were not as lucky as him, and there's this voice, maybe Hyne but probably not, because he's an asshole, and if this is fucking it he's gotta' be going the other way, down not up- but the voice, he _knows _it, right- crawl through all the fuzz in your brain, asshole, _concentrate_, reel yourself back up into the light-

The hand slides itself from shoulder to ribcage, is joined by another, and then there's this motherfucking _tug _that slams every sore muscle and bruised bone together, and his own hand is trapped underneath him, ground down into the mud-

"_Fuck_!" he roars, and she looks so goddamned _relieved _to have this mouthful of mud and spit coughed right up into her face- he can't even _remember _the last time she looked this happy to see him-

She takes him by the collar of his jacket and he is dragged backward, bumped over all the little tiny pebbles and flattened discs of bullets that have missed their targets, hauled from this street with its hurricane sea of people shoving, falling, screaming, to a little side alley that smells like cat piss.

"I thought you were _dead_!" she snaps, crouching down in front of him.

Well, fuck, don't blame him- it's not like he goddamned _meant _to be standing anywhere near that thing when it blew- excuse _him _for not being able to sniff the fucker out, like some kind of goddamned dog-

He squints up at her through all the blood clotting his eyes, takes in her white chalk cheeks and her shaking hands, and don't tell him she's busted up over the thought of him spread out in pieces all over that street-

He grins.

She wipes the blood from beneath his nose, gingerly touches his ears, sends a hot white thrill of Cura down through his shoulders where she lightly rests her fingers, and there we go- there's his hearing trickling back to him now in little drips and drops and fragments. The screams and the gurgles and the gunshots are closer, louder, still muffled but gaining force, clarity: he swims one layer at a time up through all these underwater folds that hold him cocooned.

"You burst your ear drums. That Cura will help, but you might need to seek medical attention back at Garden. Hearing loss from burst ear drums can be mild or severe, and sometimes it's only temporary, but it can be permanent- it's best if Dr. Kadowaki takes a look at it. Hearing damage is a common problem- Garden's doctors will be able to help you. What are you _smiling _about?" she snaps.

She rubs the mud from his cheek with the corner of her sleeve, smears it carefully away from his lips.

"You know, standard operating procedure is to go chase the fuckers down, not sit here and moon over one of your teammates."

She frowns down at him, stopping her ministrations for a moment. "Well -and I know I'm going to regret saying this later- contrary to what you may believe, I don't actually want you dead, Seifer."

"It's my ass, isn't it?"

"It certainly isn't your _mouth_," she snaps.

"Don't be so fast to say that, Trepe- you don't know what it can do."

He winks.

Her hands are rougher this time when they return to his face, but she crossed the street under fire and dragged him half-conscious from the shitstorm, and if that isn't _something_, he doesn't know what the fuck is.

"Where's Selphie? Did you see her? Is she all right?"

"Behind a garbage can in front of some kinky sex shop, last I saw. She'll be ok- if she can't fight the assholes, she can just talk them to death. Trust me- they'll shoot themselves to death after five minutes with her. How goddamned well I know that after two hours in this shitty little town looking for terrorists, when the whole time they've been up on the roofs, and maybe I could have just signaled one of them to fucking snipe me when she started talking about her period."

"I can't believe you were standing three feet from a bomb and you're sitting here with a bloody nose, a couple of burst ear drums, and a scraped up shin."

"I have a lucky dick," he says conversationally. "You sit on it and make three counterclockwise turns and-"

"I regret saying it already," she interrupts dryly.

"You don't mean that. Think of the way I look in a tank top."

* * *

He sits here with his dirty face and his bleeding hands and his mud-smeared smirk, and how _close _he came to leaving her, this man who knew her before, who wiped her tears and sat beside her on pale yellow dunes with bird in hand.

For a moment, with the smoke rolling down and the guns going off all around her and the soldiers dancing their spastic stringless dances and her heart so hard in her throat, blocking everything, she thought about her face in his young flawless hands, and what it felt like to _touch _someone like that, so nervously, so eagerly, not to dole out death but to experience life-

And something inside her splintered.

She kills and she watches her comrades killed in turn, and she has accepted this, she understands that this is the way her life is meant to be, that this is how it is supposed to go, but life and death are supposed to go hand in hand- she should have _both_, shouldn't she-

She did once, somewhere in a past she has tucked away inside herself until she can no longer catch the edges of its folds with her groping fingers.

She did once, and now that one thin thread back to this murky molasses period of her life, _before_, that strange and frightening time, had been snapped, severed, split.

And then she saw him move, she watched him breathe, and sitting here before him with his filthy smile and his leaking nose, there is still an ecstatic little part of her that wants to seize his face, to hold it close to her own, to press it hard into her shoulder or even harder against her lips.

But she is a soldier first, and he is only Seifer Almasy, and this feeling will pass.

This moment will fade away.

All moments fade: you can be overwhelmed by this impermanence, or you can pick up your gun and you can keep moving.

You can stop trying to understand, to reach with hope in your heart and a trembling in your hands into this thing called _past_, full of all the things you can no longer do or be or feel.

* * *

A firefight is both an eternity and a millisecond, and it is in this strange little capsule of time where this attack suspends itself forever, for only a blink.

The watch on her wrist has only clicked through five minutes when the guns stop firing and the soldiers stop falling.

Selphie yells her name and leaps on her in a frenzy of squeezing arms and flailing hair, and she lets herself be hugged by this strange little woman, she lets herself smile for just a moment, and stand with arms swinging loosely down by her sides.

She pats her awkwardly on the back, smoothes her hair and adjusts her glasses when her teammate at last pulls away, and from somewhere behind her she hears Seifer scrabbling around in the ash and the dirt and the rubble, kicking aside rocks, flipping over fenders, loudly bemoaning the fate of his gunblade, buried somewhere beneath all this death.

Death, that landslide event: it comes to smother you in time until you can no longer fight your way back toward the surface.

She is glad it did not submerge him today.

She watches him surreptitiously, until his scavenging takes him from her peripheral vision.

* * *

"It was collateral damage, Zone. It happens."

"You _blew up _the town square."

"And we killed probably a dozen soldiers, Zone. That's how we _win this_. We have to fight, not sit around in fucking basements talking about how things are going to be when we force them out- we have to actually fucking _do something_."

Revolution.

You go to war because you are right.

But what if you are not?

One morning the Galbadians drag an old woman screaming from her kitchen, and the next the Forest Owls blow another sleeping from her bed.

This is how you make war.

You kill until someone calls a ceasefire, until one side has lost too many friends, buried too many brothers, and those who are neither, these strangers who are loved by someone but not by you-

Fuck 'em.

They are not your family, your friends- who the hell _are_ they, these nameless people of the street, who come and go but only touch your life along the edges, little ripples you barely feel -a bump here, a brush there- who _cares_- who cares, right, this is how you _win_-

He sits with his Triple Triad deck in hand, playing with no one, looking out through the window of Madeleine Alder's spare bedroom.

Goddammit -_goddammit- _what is he doing, sitting here with all this warmth dripping off his nose, this…this shitty _burning _in his eyes- what is he going to _do_- just sit here and cry about it- yeah, go on and cry, Zone- Watts wouldn't have-

He flips the cards.

He wipes his eyes.

He stifles his sobs.

The best way to do this, he's found, is to keep coughing. You hack and you hack and you hack, and someone pounds you on the back, someone slaps you until you can breathe, and that glaze in your eyes, how red they are -no problem- you were just spitting up a lung after all- had a little piece of lunch stuck in your throat, maybe a glob of saliva-

This is how you survive war.

Intact?

No.

Sideslip the bombs, avoid the bullets, dodge the knifes-

You're still coming out in pieces.

But you go on.

There is no backward: there is only forward, up, out.

* * *

You think that sniping is the most removed of all murder, when you don't know a Hyne-damned thing about it. Kinda' why he chose it in the first place.

Distance killing- yeah, he can do that. Whip your face out from behind the scope fast enough, and you don't even have to watch their head explode; shut your eyes after the shot has been fired, and you are left with only the kickback of your rifle, the echoing roll of its thunder.

None of that hand to hand shit, where you can feel the blood, the bone, all the pieces of man which are so frail when you get in close, when you dig down beneath the muscle and the armor to the brittle candy stick chest cavity.

But there's a familiarity they never warn you about.

His first solo mission was the assassination of a high-ranking Estharian politician who was making just a little too much noise about President Deling, who thought that Galbadia needed to be put in its place, to understand just how much it had underestimated Esthar's technological prowess and standing army 50,000 strong.

For three days, he stalked the man. Learned his favorite coffee place, his dry cleaner's, the exact hour at which his gardener left and his maid arrived.

He knew this guy's name, his age, weight, height, how tenderly he put his kids to bed at night, the way he held his wife before he got into his car in the mornings.

The exact route the guy drove to his office every day, the precise angle of his personalized parking place and its distance from the rooftop of the upscale department store across the street.

At 08:30 he pulled his car into its spot and unfolded himself from its interior with coffee cup in hand and walked hesitantly sipping away at this coffee cup, keys in hand, toward the steps of his office, until one day he did not.

Hold your breath, squeeze the trigger, say good-bye.

You get to know a man on such an intimate level, a sort of one-sided friendship, a fascination, and then you kill him.

Is this really what he was meant for, this moment of sweating finger, hiccupping breath, the hard knifing of the roof beneath his belly pressing into all the places of him that are suddenly too soft, that give, that collapse inward- is this what his mother, Hyne, who the hell damn ever, _wanted _for him, this hole he carries around inside of him and fills up with all these faces and families and routines that he will one day stop forever-

He'd tell all that to the guy sitting here beside him, but he's so Hyne-damned quiet, and a person like that- you can never quite tell what's going on inside them.

A person like that's got their own kinda' problems.

So he lays belly to steel, sprawled out on the box of one of the train cars, feet braced behind him, rifle to his shoulder, and he watches the woods where the soldiers have chased one of the terrorists they believe to be responsible for the two car bombs and the murder of thirteen of their friends yesterday.

He inhales.

He listens to Squall breathing beside him, to the rustling of all these skeleton leaves being pushed aside by winds that whittle the trees down to bone, to make way for winter.

The blue flash of the Galbadian uniforms and the mercury glinting of their steel helmets and their thudding jackhammer boots, stomping, kicking, sweeping about, like the kid's hidden in a pile of leaves or something, and Hyne, how _long _this moment stretches, how short it lasts, this time between murder and mundane.

The routine of it, the way he checks wind speed and direction and how he adjusts accordingly, the way he wipes one hand carefully down the side of his pants and returns it slowly to the stock- little boring, little humdrum, done it a thousand times before, darlin', and see if he can't do it in his sleep, one hand tied behind his back.

But then there's the flash, the fleeting blaze of your target's hair in your sights, one corner of a smile ticking up, an eye, and something picks you up in its huge damn hand and shakes you, rattles all the teeth in your mouth and your Hyne-damn eyes in their sockets, and this trigger pressed smooth and cold against your finger and this sight pressed smooth and cold to your eye swim, blur themselves out, and shit, how can you be expected to _do _this-

The kid's up in a tree, curled up tight in the very top branches, and his fingers are so damn _white_, and his cheeks are so damn _young_, and through his sights he can see the way his chest contracts, how hard he struggles not to breathe, to keep himself still.

"There's movement toward the front of the train," Squall says quietly, and he feels the guy shift beside him, rise smoothly to his feet and stand balancing on the sloped surface. "I'm going to check it out."

"Got one, ten o'clock," he replies.

Hold your breath, squeeze the trigger, say good-bye.

Ain't nothin' to it, 'less you like your sleep untroubled and your hands clean and your conscience spotless, a course.

* * *

She laughs too loudly.

She cusses too much.

This is what she does, when they've lost another fight, when they've laid to rest another friend.

They sit around drinking from their whiskey flasks, hissing their alcohol laughter, playing their raucous Triple Triad rounds.

This is how they make it ok.

But it's not ok.

Watts is dead, and Ric, and Reila and Bram and Ty and _Hyne _how long this list is growing, how far it stretches on.

And this Rinoa Heartilly, whose father works for _them_, who was picked with so much confidence by Watts, who wants so _badly _to help-

She's so innocent. She is a little older than him, twenty next month, and she smiles so much, she skips a little when she walks, she doesn't _know_.

How can she help, she asks.

Here's a gun; here is its chamber, its magazine, its trigger.

You slap the bullets in tight and you rack the slide all the way back and you smuggle it with a smile into the room of this SeeD you used to date, and you point it between his eyes.

You pull the trigger.

You will be splattered in blood, splashed in brains.

You will pick pieces of him from between your teeth.

You will never sleep normally again.

But imagine the look on her face, if he told her this, if he showed her a knife, and how you take its point and you drive it all the way through a man until he coughs blood steaming into your face and how you keep driving this point, hammering it home, until he spasms, he goes limp, he sags gurgling from this point into your arms and never speaks again.

"Suck a little cock sweetheart," Viv suggests. "Distract him. We'll do the rest."

"Seifer and I aren't _like _that," she says indignantly, a little horrified, a little taken aback by this casually crude woman with her leather jacket and her belt full of bombs and her pockets full of guns.

"Right. I'm sure it's _different_- your romance is _pure_, the fucker loves you."

In this Rinoa Heartilly's world, there is only sunshine.

There is no blood, no smothering storm cloud smoke rolling in its tide to drown you beneath its waves.

Give her a grenade? She'd chip a nail, pulling the pin. Hand her a gun? She'd be pushed back onto her ass with a scream when it recoiled in her fingers.

But Watts saw something: he gave her a chance, he wanted her help.

So he sends her to the hotel.

He arms her with one of Viv's low-cut shirts and her own tiny little skirt and the smile that comes so easily, that is never forced or faked or forged, that has not yet been compressed beneath gun powder and the tiny ash flakes of grenades that fall like rain from the sky.

* * *

"There's been a lot of activity in the woods, but we're not exactly sure where they're holed up. Probably got something out there, maybe an underground cellar, some kind of storm shelter, where they're staying. We suspect they've got contacts right here in town, too, people who hide them, maybe stick them down in their basements, move them from house to house under our noses. We've been conducting a few raids randomly, seeing if we can flush them out. If we don't catch them, we'll at least make it too dangerous for them to stay here in town, push them all out into the woods- easier to round them up that way, if they're all in one place."

She taps her toe thoughtfully against the carpet, crossing her arms. "My team and I have checked around town a bit, and I'm sure some of the townspeople are hiding them as well, but we haven't been able to pin down exactly where they are, or who's helping them. I have the suspicion most of the town is involved, which is why no one is talking. _Someone _knows something- they can't possibly be working all on their own, with no connections here in town. Maybe after yesterday, after they hurt and killed several innocents- maybe someone will be willing to step forward now. I'm going to take a few of my people into town, see if we can't shake loose a few leads."

The lieutenant with his helmet off, tucked beneath the wing of his elbow, looks away uncomfortably, scratching his neck. "It's brutal, but maybe anyone who's suspected of any sort of connection to these Forest Owls, who won't talk- maybe we just need to start marching them out into the streets and publicly executing them, until we get to someone who's too scared to not give them up. It's getting out of hand."

Start killing and do not stop.

Flush them out and shoot them down.

Except they're just _children_.

But aren't they all, they who are barely of legal drinking age, they who have never known what it is to not take a life, to spare a man?

She watches Seifer and Irvine from the corner of her eye, talking in the corner, Seifer with Hyperion over his shoulder, Irvine with Exeter propped like a walking stick on the carpet, leaning down onto it.

Squall, standing quietly off to one side, Selphie all around him in a gnat buzzing, poking his buckles, his jacket, his blade.

"There has to be another way," she says quietly.

A different path, a separate road- don't they deserve this, they with their eight years and their cold beds and their lonely motherless pasts- just because your family did not want you, does it mean that you have to be twisted into _this_- is there really nothing _else_-

"Have to see, won't we? It's not what I want either, but this is war: nothing pretty about it."

She taps her boots, shifts her arms. "I'll send two of my men into the woods with your platoon. The others will stay here with me- we'll canvass the town, see if-"

The door bangs open.

"Hi! Sorry for slamming the door!" the girl standing in its frame says with a smile, wiggling her fingers in a little flicker of a wave, skipping forward one step, two, to let the door rocket shut with another gunshot boom behind her.

She is a girl with no blood under her fingernails, with no kills beneath her belt, buffed, polished, glowing.

All of the men turn to look at her, Seifer, Irvine, Squall-

Squall, with his impassive soldier's face and his blank mannequin eyes, which flicker just slightly, show just a tiny fleeting flame of interest-

Something folds itself up so small inside her.

She is the kind of woman you are supposed to instantly hate, this girl who smiles so easily and breaks hearts without knowing and bounces right through life with her family who loves her and her boyfriends who worship her, and she flings herself into Seifer Almasy's arms like she has done it before.

"Seifer! I thought I saw you in town the other day! I'm so happy to see you! It's been too long, huh? How are ya' doing? I'm in town visiting some friends for a while! How long are you here for?"

Jealousy, that ugly, bitter ash.

It is so easy to ingest, so hard to swallow.

He has dropped Hyperion.

He is smiling back, and standing with both arms around her shoulders, holding her up, and there is so much easy intimacy in this pose, such comfortable familiarity. In all their years at Garden he has pursued her, flirted with her, made his leering suggestions and his unwelcome advances, but he has never held her like this.

But once, before, with his hands on her cheeks, his lips on her own-

But that was _before_, and before has been swept away into dust and thrown out with the trash.

Or maybe it never happened, maybe she just wants so hard to _believe_, to trust that once she made a connection, once someone wanted her too- maybe his young, young hands and the scent of summer and the taste of rootbeer are all conjurings- maybe there has only ever been this girl for him, and Quistis Trepe has always been the diversion, the side show.

She is not the main act.

She has _never _been the main act.

"We're moving out," she interrupts coldly.

"Oh, ok!" the girl replies brightly. "I'm Rinoa! It's nice to meet you!"

How many exclamation points is this girl going to use? She cannot possibly be this enthusiastic about every single one of her sentences.

Seifer lets her down and stands with one hand still on Rinoa's waist, smirking across the room at her, the stupid, infuriating _man_. "You PMSing or something, Trepe?"

"Trepe?" Rinoa asks, cocking her head.

"Our great and mighty leader, Quistis Trepe, darlin'. Nice to see you again too, by the way. Still prettier than almost everyone," Irvine cuts in.

Quistis glares at him.

"You're part of the 'almost', sweetheart," he says with a wink.

"Oh- _you're _Quistis," Rinoa says, so knowingly, and what on earth is _that _supposed to mean, she thinks, clutching the handle of the whip she spent two hours fishing out of steel and rubber ruins.

* * *

Their afternoon is useless, fruitless: the doors of the townspeople are shut tight, no one saw anything, and these Forest Owls -who are they- why is she _bothering _them with her stupid questions, her persistent queries- hasn't Galbadia already done _enough_, sweeping in here like this and taking away their _home_-

Four hours later, she gives up, and two hours after that, Irvine and Squall return, nothing to show for their day either, and they all convene at a small coffee shop down the road from the hotel, and wouldn't you know it- bouncy Rinoa Heartilly just so _happens _to be in the area and just so happens to be interested in coming along, and that stupid irritating _man _just so happens to be in an accommodating mood.

"This is a military matter," she protests. "No civilians."

Irvine gives her a strange look. "We're havin' lattes, Quisty, not talkin' missile codes."

"Maybe _you're _having a latte," Seifer puts in. "I'm having an actual man drink."

Their presence is not particularly welcomed at this small coffee shop just down the road, but neither is it turned away, and so they sit at a corner table, Rinoa between Seifer and Irvine, she across from them with Squall to her right and Selphie to her left, and there is this squeezing inside her chest, watching the three of them interact, peeking in on this little part of their world that she has never been made privy to.

Squall's knee is so warm against hers, and this is something at least, but why is her throat so _tight_, wondering how he met her, what he sees, in this pretty airy little thing who pouts when she doesn't get her way and brightens so quickly, a sunshine woman. Is it that she is so different, that she has never set her knife to a man's throat and carved until he goes still- is it her carefully-applied eyeliner and her expert lip gloss and her shiny commercial hair which has never been plastered in blood or powdered in bone-

Squall shifts against her, and he is so _close_, so uncomfortably huddled over his mug, frown on his lips, crease in his brow, and what is _wrong _with her, to be thinking of Seifer in a moment like this, a moment meant for preservation, for tucking away.

But she saw how Squall looked at this girl.

She saw his stone face move and his granite eyes flicker and she has never had a chance with him, she knows this, of course, but why did he have to look at this girl he has never even _met _with his admiration clear on his face- when is the last time he's even _noticed _a girl-

In class she sits beside him and in battle she fights beside him, and maybe she does not have time to perfect her makeup or to curl her eyelashes but she has tried to understand him, she has given him a place to retreat and a friend to talk with and he looks at her like she is nothing, like he stepped in her and she has smeared herself across his boot, and Seifer-

Seifer, the one boy who could always be counted upon to throw a little attention her way, to never quite leave her alone- he had this girl she never even knew about, this girl who is nothing like her, who she can never be.

She looks down into her coffee, into the little white stars of sugar that suction themselves down into its whirlpool center, and something begins to burn behind her eyes and thicken in her throat, and this is _ridiculous_, she is a _soldier_-

She stands up.

"So you put it in your hair and you leave it there for like an hour or two, and then when you wash it out, your hair's all shiny and soft! I'm trying to get Quisty to do it even though she already has nice hair, because you can never have hair that's _too _nice, and hey, Quisty, where ya' going?"

"I just need a little air; it's too hot in here."

Irvine's eyes are too perceptive, and he looks at her so _kindly_, like she will be broken with a glance, and she will not sit here and be _pitied_.

"Hey, Quisty, you shouldn't be out there alone. You goin' straight back to the hotel?" he asks, starting to stand.

"I'll walk her." Seifer shoves his chair back with a loud screaming of metal legs on polished floor tiles, retrieving Hyperion from where he has leaned it against the table.

"I'll go by myself. I'll be fine- they've doubled the patrols after the bombing the other day."

He follows her outside anyway.

"I don't understand which part of 'by myself' was unclear."

"You look like someone just slit your asshole open and poured lemon juice into it."

"Well, thank you for that incredibly charming and not at all thoroughly disgusting imagery, Seifer." She walks faster.

He keeps pace easily. "Do you know why Rinoa knew who you were?"

"I don't particularly care."

"We went out a couple of times and Irvine hung around us a little when we first started dating. He couldn't stop talking about you."

"_Irvine_? Why would he be talking about me to some woman who doesn't even know me?"

"I don't know, Trepe- maybe he's got the hots for you. Every guy at Garden with a functioning dick has probably rubbed one off to that whip demonstration you do for the new cadets. I know I have."

"Hyne, do you have to be so _disgusting_, Seifer- I said I'd like to take a walk by myself, which hardly includes your sexist commentary-"

"I was just kidding," he interrupts, matching his strides to hers, so effortlessly- why do his legs have to be so damn _long_. "Not about rubbing one off to you swinging around your whip, though- that's just good pipe cleaning material."

"_Seifer_."

"Irvine wasn't the one who kept talking about you," he says, and there is something like caution in his voice now, a hesitation she does not often hear from him. "That was me."

"Did you need advice on which particular message to write in permanent marker all over my desk? Or the best way to blame me for the pornographic cartoons Instructor Grant found inside your textbook-"

"Those _were _your fault. If I have to sit next to you for several hours while Grant drones on about fucking Guardian Forces and their origins in ancient Centra and how that all ties into draw points, and blah blah fucking blah, the least you could do is look ugly so that I don't have any inspiration in the first place for pornographic cartoons."

She scoffs.

"Let me ask you something, Trepe."

The hotel is within sight now, so close, another step, two, and she will reach its entryway, its charming lace-curtain windows and its painted blue shutters and the guards posted to either side of its front door, rifles at shoulder arms, except now suddenly there is a hand on her arm, and it crushes down, compresses the bones of her wrist, and with a startled little cry she is yanked away, pulled back-

"What are you _doing_-"

In the street, in the early evening, the sky not yet turned to dusk, the roads not yet turned to folds of shadow which can be used to disappear, to blend away, he stands with his nose so close to her own, nearly touching, that hand still on her wrist, squeezing, holding her in place, and what the hell does he think he's _doing_, the stupid, pushy man-

* * *

Why the fuck does he want to say it _now_, with those fuckwits watching from the hotel entryway and the open-mouthed moron kid across the street staring with his sidewalk chalk in hand-

It's just the way it _claws _at him, crawling inch by inch up his throat, a little reluctantly at first, finding its way, picking out its handholds, and then it firms its grip, it shoots itself upward, it spreads itself like vomit across his tongue-

She just looked so fucking _forlorn _watching Rinoa hurl herself into his arms, and that had to mean _something_, didn't it-

"Seifer, what are you doing? There are people watching."

Fuck these people and fuck his stupid _cowardly _asshole fucking _chicken shit _pussy-footing around the subject- he wants to tell her right goddamned _now_-

"Irvine wasn't the one who kept talking about you."

"You already said that."

"I _know_, goddammit. But you're not getting it."

"What is there to get, Seifer- you dated Rinoa and apparently you talked about me with her, which, in the future, I would prefer you not do- I am hardly the business of your girlfriends, and I'm sure they're not interested in hearing about me anyway."

"What kind of guy spends all his time talking about some other chick to a chick he's got a chance of boning?" he snaps.

"I don't know," she says coolly, arching an eyebrow. "A very rude one? A clueless one? One who is going to be spending a lot of time sleeping on the couch-"

He drops her wrist. "You piss me off."

She has this way of getting mad that has never changed, not after eight years of Garden's indoctrination, not after eight years of pushing everything down deep and stomping it flat, this firecracker…_explosion _that is over just as soon as she realizes she has lost her composure, and now she reaches out, and she shoves him back, and he stumbles, he goes down to a knee-

"_I _piss _you _off, Seifer? You chase me down after I make it utterly explicit that I want to be left alone, you throw around these little cryptic references to conversations with a girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend, whatever she is, and then you act as though I'm _stupid_-"

"_You are stupid_," he roars. "You are so goddamned _fucking _stupid sometimes, Quistis- you have your nose buried so far in your goddamned books and the rest of your head up your fucking _ass_-"

* * *

Hyne, she could _choke _him- what is his _problem_-

"I find it ironic that you asked earlier if _I _were PMSing," she snaps. "Go back to the coffee shop, Seifer. I'll be in my room, if anyone needs me- excepting you."

"What, am I fucking _banned _now, or something? Do you want me to sit in time-out? Gonna' fucking rub my nose in it -why don't you spank me, Trepe- I'd like that."

She _will _choke him, the stupid man- why can't he just shut his _mouth _and leave her _alone_-

"Let's not make a scene in the middle of the street," she hisses through clenched teeth, keeping her fingers with great difficulty from Save the Queen's handle, so tempting, she could just loop it around him, pull it tight, shut him _up_-

"I will make a scene if I goddamned want to," he sneers.

"Then you can make it without me." She spins to go.

He darts his arm out with snake quickness, jerks her back.

"_Stop _it." She pushes away; he pulls back.

In this way they struggle, he too strong for her to overpower, she too stubborn for him to conquer, and what is _wrong _with him- why does he have to make everything so _difficult_- why can't he just _let her be_-

She wants to wallow, to lie alone on her bed with her arm over her eyes; she wants for just a moment to let herself be submerged in just how _unfair _it all is-

He snags her sleeve, tugs her close; she lashes out with her arm, arcs it up, brings it down across his face with a resounding slap that snaps his head back, and she didn't mean it, she slipped-

For just a moment, there is a little kernel of guilt that flickers on in her chest, a tiny star of a thing, burning, spreading its thick fingers up into her throat, to ball themselves there in a fist that will not move, that does not shift.

He stands looking down at her with his tight jaw and his narrow eyes and his thin white lips, and then he ducks down leans forward, flings her unceremoniously up across his shoulder.

He stomps past the two guards with their rifles at shoulder arms, their mouths hanging in loose puppet astonishment beneath their helmets.

He thunders all the way up the stairs without a word.

He throws her down across her bed, and she bounces once, uses this motion to springboard back to her feet, and he shoves her _again_, forces her back down, how _dare _he-

"If you're going to throw a fucking tantrum, then you can sit here like a little fucking brat and goddamned _pout_," he snarls, and there is no more tiny burning star of guilt in her chest or thick-fingered fist in her mouth, and what exactly comes over her she is not sure, but suddenly she is airborne, she is perched on the back he has so stupidly turned toward her with arms around his neck and legs about his waist, and for just a moment, there is another fragment, a blonde-haired boy on a beach and how _angry _he's made her, and she sinks her fists into his stomach and her teeth into the hand he uses to pry her off him-

And then this is swept away, burned to nothing, and he _flips _her, the bastard, reaches back with one hand to peel her off his shoulders, tips himself forward, swings her in a graceful arc over his shoulder to land with a loud thud on the carpet at his feet, his hand still holding her arm, and sometime in between throwing herself onto his back and spinning wildly over his shoulder she has lost her glasses, and now his face is only a blur, but she swings for it anyway, she is batted easily away, she is pinned squirming down by his knees on her legs and his hands on her wrists.

"Stop trying to take my fucking head off!"

"Get off me!"

"Yeah, sure- I'll just go ahead and let you up so you can break one of the posts off your bed and shove it up my ass or something. I'll get right fucking _on _that."

His hand slips a little on her left wrist, and it is just enough of a lapse for her to yank herself free, for her to have it captured once more a mere half inch from his face.

"Stop trying to fucking hit me!" he yells.

"Stop deserving it!" she yells back, and then somehow his other hand slides itself off her right wrist, and she pops up, maybe to bury her forehead in his gut, to whip a hook shot flashing toward his ribs, she is not sure -she never is, when he makes her this mad. When she stood on that beach with her fists in his stomach and her teeth in his hand she'd never really understood how precisely she'd gotten there, she _remembers _this now, that he has always been pissing her off, for so much longer than she has ever suspected-

He presses her back down.

"_Get off me_, Seifer."

"I'll get off you when your eyes stop giving me penis-killing vibes."

She thrashes, twists, bows her body upward and then abruptly yanks it back downward.

"Would you just knock it the fuck off- you're going to hurt yourself. What the hell is wrong with you?"

That is precisely what she would like to know.

If you have faith, if you believe in a man who lives inside the clouds, who with his own two hands created all the mountains and the rivers and the people on this planet, then you believe that each and every one of these people of the planet have been shaped in his image, that he does not make mistakes, that each and every single _one _of these people is worthy.

And yet she goes unloved. She substitutes a higher rank, another medal for affection, because these are the only things she can have, because this Hyne who people speak of in their hushed voices and their reverent tones does not exist, or he messed up, he assembled her wrong, and she does not _deserve_.

But she wants.

Hyne, how she _wants_.

This is the worst part of being human. Give her a clockwork heart, a thing of gears, of levers, of ticking minute hands which creep inexorably forward and onward, always. It does not care, it needs no love, wind its hands, replace its batteries, mend its pendulums.

To want, to feel, to empty out- all of these little human flaws, these cracks, these errors -take them _away_- program her differently, reset her codes, brainwash her _better_-

He frowns down at her. He slowly takes his knees off her legs, his hands from her wrists.

She sits up rubbing her wrists, not looking at him.

"Hey."

She says nothing.

"Trepe."

"Where are my glasses?" she asks quietly.

"I don't know. They flew off when you were trying to assassinate me."

She deflates so _quickly_: is this just how it is used to go before, on that beach, with her hands pounding his face and her feet scoring his shins -does he even remember this before, this beach- have they really known each other so long- has she really forgotten so _much_?

He crouches in front of her with his hands on his knees, examining her downcast eyes, and now he reaches out one scarred thumb and sets it lightly on the point of her chin, runs it all the way up to just barely graze the bottom of her lip, leaves it there.

"Why did the man cross the road?"

"Excuse me?"

"Come on, Trepe: why did the man cross the road?"

She stares at him.

"He heard the chicken was a slut."

It is so _fast_, this breaking apart of the knot in her throat: just a moment, one fractal splinter of a second and this knot transforms itself into a helpless little laugh, and the way he _smiles_, when she lets this helpless little laugh free of her chest-

She will never understand how he changes her anger so quickly.

For just a moment, they can do nothing but smile at one another.

And maybe it is only Seifer, maybe this moment is only a moment, a stretched-out second, but this -isn't this how it is supposed to be- isn't it this _warmth_ that is all she wants, the smiles, the little glances, the feeling that just for a second, just for an instant, someone is really _listening_?

It has never been like this with Squall.

"I'm sorry I hit you," she says quietly. "It was actually an accident, but I shouldn't have lost my temper at all- it was unprofessional of me."

"I'm not sorry I pissed you off," he replies. "You're cute when you're mad, Trepe."

And this too -this stirs something inside of her, an unfolding, a reaching out- and Hyne, how badly she wants to _understand_-

She doesn't want to know.

She can't stand to remain in the dark.

But in eight years, he has never mentioned this _before_; he does not remember the rootbeer kiss or the summertime wind, and is it really for her to pry the nails from this particular coffin, to air it out, to force it into the sun-

You do not go back.

You have chosen (or been chosen by) Garden, and this choice- take it as a eulogy to your old life.

Garden is a sort of religion all its own: you die and are reborn in this tomb of steel and spell, and of your previous existence you need remember nothing.

Maybe he wouldn't want to know.

Maybe he _does _remember and he simply doesn't care- maybe this other Quistis who sat in her swing and had her face cradled by his young unblemished hands wasn't particularly interesting, and it was only his youth, his curiosity that made him lean into her, eyes shut, mouth open.

"What?" he asks, taking his thumb from her bottom lip and draping both of his hands across his thighs.

"Nothing."

And it is.

It is a part of this 'before', after all: it has been sucked into the same void as the childhood she cannot remember and the parents who gave her away and the other children who never tried to find her.

* * *

Set the coffee down carefully.

Hood up.

Breath even.

One step, two step.

This is the way he goes through life now, this sort of careful reverence for each foot he places, every eye he draws.

Think you are watched, you with your parents still peeking over your shoulder at a book page, a computer monitor, a TV screen- think this unending observation of all your little habits, your routines, your tics- you think that's bad? Can't stand it, ready to move on, to get out, gotta' be _free_-

Every day, he is 'free'.

He resists.

He fights on, even while his friends fall and his principles shrivel and flake and drop sliver by sliver into their graves.

And he walks just so, not too fast, not too slow; he hides his face, not too much, not too little; he calculates his smiles, analyzes his waves, watches his 'good mornings' and scrutinizes his 'good nights' because they are always _waiting_-

Step wrong?

Bang; there goes your head.

Pull your hood up too fast, turn your head away too quickly?

Bang.

Get caught with this bulge in your jacket pocket, get searched while this cold metal barrel presses its smooth steel spine to your own, backbone to backbone-

Bang.

After a while, your world is only one long pause before the shot.

This is _freedom_, when you don't take it for granted.

He slides his gil across the counter and smiles at the woman who stands all day in a mist of latte steam and caramel chemicals, and out of the corner of one eye he watches the tall SeeD, the one with the cowboy hat and the rifle, slip himself out of his chair to amble with thumbs in his pockets toward the counter.

"Got anymore sugar up here, darlin'?"

Zone smiles nonchalantly when the guy meets his eyes, picks up his change, his coffee.

"Hey-"

Oh Hyne oh Hyne oh Hyne oh _Hyne_- don't spill the coffee, don't stir the hood with your panicked animal breaths- do not _fucking _move- don't put a finger out of place-

He turns back to the SeeD, one eyebrow lifted, face blank. "Yeah?"

The guy points to his left pocket, the one with the dog-eared novel hanging half out of his jacket, cover bent.

"'Last Day of a Condemned Man'. One of my favorite books- don't see too many people reading that."

"It's not very well-known," Zone says cautiously. "It kind of got shoved aside to make room for his more famous novels."

"You read it yet?"

"Twice."

"'Whatever I do, this dread thought is ever with me, like a ghost at my side, alone and jealous, chasing away all other thoughts, face to face with my wretched self, and touching me with its icy hands when I turn away and close my eyes.' Still remember that line, even though I read it a couple of years ago."

He has highlighted that line in yellow marker.

He knows too well about the things that are seen once the eyes are closed, the icy specter touch of one single persistent thought that will not leave you alone, that never fades away.

Maybe yours is about a test you didn't study for, or an assignment you didn't do, or a friend you forgot to thank, but his- his is death, of course.

Eighteen, and this is all he sees.

The SeeD takes three packets of sugar from the woman behind the counter. "You read anything else by him? Aside from the two big ones, of course? Think just about every school assigns those."

"Toilers of the Sea. Ninety-three," he says quietly.

"A fan, huh?"

"Uh, yeah. You could definitely say that."

"What about Jel Refresion? You ever read him? He was one of the heavyweights during that time period, too."

"No."

"Should. Got assigned his 'Testament of Youth' for class, and course, you kinda' hate anything you're forced to read right off the bat, without even givin' it a chance, but I was hurtin' pretty bad for a good grade, so I sat down that night and read it, and man, I stayed up all night finishin' it. Showed up late for class the next day after sleepin' through my alarm and got detention over it."

"I'll see if I can find it."

The SeeD nods and tells him, "Have a nice day," and walks away whistling.

He sits down at a small corner table with his book and his coffee, eyes on Rinoa.

How friggin' carefree she looks, sitting between all those murderers.

But then, she's already had her practice, hasn't she, sharing Val Denley's kitchen table with him and Viv and Jenks Riley, the little fifteen-year-old kid who used to have a brother, until he boarded one of the incoming trains to steal an arms shipment from Galbadia, and came out full of holes.

They're the same, him and these SeeDs.

Different sides, is all.

He used to sit at his desk with his textbooks and wonder why the hell would you blow a guy's brains out just because he wears a different uniform, just because some old geezer politician told you, "They are wrong and we are right". Don't you think that guy whose brains you just blew out probably got told the same thing- how fuckin' _stupid_, to keep killing people in the name of some cause.

And then Watts followed their fathers off to battle, and he trailed behind, and you want to know what it is- it's the _passion_, the ringing speeches and the guns thrust toward the sky and the fists raised clenched and trembling and _freedom_, god_damn _-it's the best word ever, it's the best _reason _ever- you get swept up, carried away, sucked down.

Drowned.

And then one day you are washed back to shore: you lie curled up on its banks where there are no bombs, there is no blood, just sun, and sand, but it is so beyond too goddamn late that it's like Hyne did it just for shits and giggles, and he's already hit the jetty, tried to clutch a rock, to grab an overhang, and he has done this so _many _times, and always he is swept out to sea, always, always, goddamn _always _he can never get a handhold, he can never pull himself back-

He sips his coffee.

He flips the pages of his book.

Go forward; keep trying, right Watts?

Our fathers fought, and we carry on, and how long are we going to keep doing this- do we pass this revolution along to our kids, our grandkids, to their grandkids- do we _give up_, because we are tired, because we have been fighting for so long, and we want to go back to our 40" TVs and our gaming systems and our school dances?

No, he told them.

Not me.

But that was back before. Watts wasn't stupid; he knew the risks; he understood the hazards.

But a twenty-year-old kid- they're all just a little bit invincible.

The bullets fall and the soldiers charge and the freaking _sounds_- the acid blood on your face, the damp dirt in your mouth, the way you scream, and you _scream _and you keep on screaming, and it's like this shriek bears you up, pushes you forward, through the soldiers, over the bodies, beyond the front line- you are all machine limbs and android lungs and your war drum feet and your balloon heart, inflating, inflating, inflating- they keep you going, forever you will run, past the casualties, the corpses, the kids with their blown-off arms and their marble eyes- not gonna' be you, never you-

And then the shot.

The stagger.

The machine limbs twitch, stutter, flop loosely down in the leaves to shudder their electrical short-out seizures; the android lungs empty explosively, fill themselves back up with their sloshing copper breaths; the war drum feet kick trenches in the mud, boot the leaves into spinning Halloween showers; and the balloon heart-

It beats in your throat, your chest, your wrist.

Hear it in your ears; feel it pushing away at your fingertips.

Listen to it keep doing this, feel it push push push, beat beat beat.

Little stamping animal feet all through your body: thud thud thudthudthudthudthudthudthud-

Watch the leaves in their spinning Halloween showers circle, eddy, land themselves like snowflakes on marble eyes.

Feel the trenches in the mud slither up to claim your toes, your ankles, your calves.

Breathe.

_Breathe_, your father always told you, _breathe in, hold it, pull the trigger._

But your android lungs stopped _working _and oh Hyne oh _Hyne _what happened to your _scream_, the one that pushed you forward and through and over- where did it _go _-how did this _happen_- you're a _kid_- kids are not _supposed to die_- that's for the mummified grandparents with their wrinkled prune fingers and their creased parchment cheeks- not you oh please oh please please _please _not you not yet-

But Time doesn't give a shit that you have not had enough of it, and down swings the scythe, off comes your head, down down fucking _down _roars the black, the silence, the nothing.

Life?

A cliff.

And sometimes you just get forced off the edge too soon.

Watts knew this on an intellectual level, just as everyone from the kid attending her first funeral to the old guy sunning on his porch knows this, but to understand it, to really _really _understand it, to face it-

Well, look into the void.

Don't see yourself in it, do you?

Pick up your gun, shoulder your cause, bow beneath the weight of your convictions, say your prayers, make your peace, tell yourself you are ready, bring it, _fuckers_-

Lie disbelieving in the mud with your twitching machine limbs and your sloshing copper lungs, because, shit, you didn't _mean _any of that- you weren't really going to _die_, not so goddamn _soon_-

But you did.

You will.

He sips his coffee.

He turns the pages of his book.

Take your moments where you can, Watts used to say, because it just sounded so _sage_, but did he take his moments with Malena and stretch them out, make them last, did he really ever _think _he would be one of those bodies in those ditches, watching with his staring marble eyes?

No.

He wanted _kids_. He was going to ask Malena to _marry _him- a guy on his death bed, who feels his last breaths leaving and his final beats failing -he doesn't _do _that- he doesn't plan ahead- he doesn't tell his friend, happy birthday, see you later, be back with your present when he's never coming _home_-

Fuck.

_Fuck_.

He is so _weak_; he hides behind books in coffee shops with his stinging red eyes and his saltwater lips, and, shit, _great_, there goes his nose, too, the _fucker_- why's crying have to be so damn _ugly_-

He rips three napkins from the dispenser in front of him and wipes his eyes, his nose, his lips.

Forward.

_Forward_.

There is no backward anymore.

* * *

Seifer.

Seifer.

Seifer Seifer Seifer Seifer Seifer Seifer-

That fucking _voice_: everywhere and always.

All he wants is a little goddamned _sleep_.

He sits with his sketchpad propped on his knees, scribbling, crosshatching, stippling.

* * *

**A/N: So Quistis is a little catty when she's jealous, the crazy is still slowly coming for Seifer, and Zone is going to have a much larger role than he did in the game. It's been interesting taking him and fleshing him out, because he is such a nonentity in the game that it's almost like working with an original character.**

**Also, 'Last Day of a Condemned Man', 'Toilers of the Sea' and 'Ninety-three' are all titles of some of Victor Hugo's lesser-known works. 'Testament of Youth' is actually by Vera Brittan, I just decided to make up a little more exotic name.**


	17. Interlude Eight

**A/N: Jeez, guys, I'm sorry about the wait on this. I had my trip (which was a lot of fun) and then was fortunate enough to experience some computer issues when I got home which took me a bit to sort out, so all that put me a bit behind. Updates will be a little longer in coming anyway, because I'm working on a series of one-shots while simultaneously writing this, and I like to finish up a whole one-shot before I switch back over to this fic. I still have several chapters of this stockpiled, however, and I am closing in on the end of the first part and the confrontation with the sorceress and all that, so I'm really eager to sort all that out, and I think I have some interesting stuff for you guys coming up. (Or bloody, at least. Which is interesting, right?)**

**Thank you so much to those of you who have stuck with this. I love hearing from you.**

* * *

"Quistis?"

She is halfway between first period homeroom and second period Centran History when she is stopped by Gaiden Luppley, binder balanced casually across one shoulder, hand in his pocket.

"Yes?"

"Some guy's looking for you."

"Who?" She shifts her books in her arms, flicks a frowning look down at her watch -one minute to the bell- glances back up in time to catch his casual one-shouldered shrug.

"Dunno. Tall? Blonde? Haven't seen him before. He was asking around about you."

For just a moment, she merely exists.

Breath, heart, the startled quivering of her blindly blinking eyes-

She is nothing else.

No.

_No_.

Gaiden stands staring at her, one eyebrow lifted, and what she must look like right now, with her open mouth and her blinking eyes and her stunned statue immobility-

"Where is he?" she asks.

"Out front on the lawn, in between building C & D- he's been asking the kids going to class if they know you and what building you're in. Is he, like, a stalker or something? Do you need me to go with you?"

"Green eyes? Freckles? Really tall?" An insufferable gloating _ass _who has probably been _laughing _at her all this time, who doesn't _deserve _her time or her feelings or her stubborn _stupid _tears.

"Yeah. That's him."

"All right. Thank you. I'll go find him."

"You sure you don't need me to go with you?"

"No, thank you. He isn't harmful."

Just annoying.

Just _arrogant_.

Just an egotistical, irritating _boy _she should have never trusted with her heart- Hyne, the things she _wrote _to him, the way she tucked those letters carefully away in their fairytale beds, sandwiched between layers of cardboard and pulp, print and paint-

She was lonely.

She was _lonely_.

And then his sloppily post-marked letter made its appearance in the mailbox and she was no longer alone, she had a friend, a confidant, someone who did not forget, who wanted her back, and for so _long_, she had this friend, this confidant, this boy who never forgot, who needed her too.

And then she took a risk: she stepped off the cliff.

She fell forever.

A confession like that- it's so terribly _quiet_ afterward, so immensely _empty_- in your throat so many things are coiled, heart, lungs, stomach, all of you contained in this one small space, cramped together, crowding closely, and all you need is _something_, you just want them _free_-

For a week, you run to your mailbox.

You sit in your room with textbook in hand, not reading. You watch the clock, count its ticks, measure time in postal routines.

It will come, you tell yourself.

And she did- oh _Hyne _she told herself, she _believed_.

He always wrote her back.

He never missed a week.

The first inched.

The second soared.

_Fine_, she told herself. See if she _cares_. _See if she cares_- stupid letters with their _stupid _little raindrop splotches smearing the ink, blurring the insults, the jokes, the parts of himself he revealed piece by grudging little piece-

And now he is here.

He stands with both hands in his pockets, turned away from her, looking out across the lawn toward the small knot of students standing outside Mrs. Anderson's classroom, head cocked, and Hyne, has he gotten even _taller_- has he filled out a little more throughout the shoulders-

He glances back over his shoulder, freezes for just a moment, twists himself around to face her.

She presses her books as hard as they will go into her chest, rolling one foot from sole to side.

"Hi."

Hi, he says.

_Hi_. Like she has not been _waiting_, _hoping_- like she has not poured out her heart to him and gotten _nothing_.

"What do you want?" she asks imperiously.

Why can't he stop _smiling _-what is his _problem_- why does he have to look so damned _happy_?

"We're gonna' go to Balamb." He pulls his hand out of his pocket, fans two tickets between his fingers with a flourish.

"What?"

"You said you wanted to see Balamb, right? And you're too much of a chicken to just ask someone to take you, so I got you a ticket. We gotta' leave now, if we're gonna' catch the train in time."

She tries to roll her jaw back up into her face. "Shouldn't you -aren't you- it's a _school day_, Seifer."

"Tch. School's stupid. Sides, we can't wait until afterward- it'll be too late. If you want to have all day to go see everything you're gonna' have to miss out on a couple of classes."

"It's not a 'couple of classes', Seifer- it's the entire school day, and you can't just show up here without even telling me you're coming- does anyone even know you're here?"

"Nobody'll notice, Quisty, don't worry. Don't get your panties in a twist." He smiles. "Glad to see me, huh?"

"_No_."

"Yeah you are. You're all red."

"I'm red because I'm _angry_- you could have at least told me you were coming- you could have, perhaps, I don't _know_- asked me before showing up with a train ticket, just expecting me to follow along behind you."

His face darkens. "You _said _you wanted to go."

"Yes, well, that was before."

"Before what?"

Oh- _boys_! How stupid can he be? Does he really think she just likes her own penmanship so much- did she write that terrible useless _stupid _confession just to admire the peaks of her m's, the slopes of her l's- how can he just _stand _here and be so _clueless_-

"I have to get to class, Seifer. I'm sorry you came all this way for nothing."

"What's your _problem_?" he snaps, grabbing her elbow as she spins to leave.

"My _problem_? My _problem_, Seifer?" She yanks her arm out of his grip. "What happened to your last letter? Did it get lost in the mail or something?"

"I didn't write one."

"That's exactly _my point_."

"_That's _what you're mad about?"

_That's _what she's mad about -that's _all_- of course, stupid her, what could she _possibly _have to be upset about-

She wonders just exactly what shape his head will take on if she fires her binder as hard as she can into his face.

He stuffs the tickets back into his pockets and stands with both hands awkwardly dangling in front of him, forehead creased. "I just didn't know what to say."

She doesn't want it to hurt.

She has had two weeks to believe, to wallow, to accept.

But why doesn't he just take his boot to her chest- why doesn't he just punch her stomach, her throat, her _heart_- they have already been compressed beneath some horrible stone weight; she already can hardly swallow or breathe or glare without blinking, and _Hyne_, why do her stupid eyes have to be so _hot_-

"I'm going to class," she says quietly.

"No. Hey, stop- come _on_, Quistis." He reaches out, slips his fingers around her bicep, holds her just tightly enough to stop her next step, to freeze her where she stands, books to her chest. "I mean, you were quoting this poetry stuff and I mean what was I supposed to say to that- I'd probably just look stupid, but, look, I was _happy_, ok- I saved up for these tickets, and I went and bought them as soon as I could and I thought you'd know, if I just showed up here, after you said that- I thought you'd get that-" He rubs the back of his neck uncomfortably, looks away with a frown. "Well, I dunno- I thought that it was already obvious."

The bell rings.

She is officially, for the first time in the history of her academic career, late for class.

"Just come, ok? There's the bookstore, and the docks, and the market's not open until the weekend, but there are all these shops down by the beach where you can buy souvenirs and food and stuff and it's kinda' cool if you're into stupid stuff like that, and there's a spot on the beach where you can rent chocobos to ride, and the library, and maybe, I mean, I haven't seen him for a long time, so probably not, but maybe Zell will come home to visit his mom, but even if he doesn't, we can go see her- I still go visit her all the time even though Zell's gone, and you could meet her- she wants to meet you. I told her about you and she thinks you sound really nice and she says that if you're ever in Balamb I have to bring you by or she'll beat me like I'm her own-"

She has never heard him string so many words together into one single gibbering speech- rambling has always been Zell's tendency. But it's…it's endearing, to hear him go on like this, to listen to his voice rise nervously, drop uncertainly, to understand suddenly that he is nervous, that he is just as inexperienced and frightened as she.

"What time is the train?" she asks.

* * *

She has never ridden the train before.

He can tell by the way she presses her nose to the glass, watches the scenery outside the window blur and warp and melt, how she can't stop looking, smiling, darting from window to window.

Tch. Girls are so stupid sometimes, you know? Gettin' all butt hurt over something dumb like that- he doesn't have to say it out _loud_, does he, not when for so long he's been telling her without telling her.

She sits down finally during one of the midway stops between Balamb and Deling City, and he crowds onto the seat beside her, sits with his hands in a sweaty little strangled knot between his knees.

He reaches over carefully, picks her fingers from the tidy little pile she has made of them on her lap, wiggles his own between them.

She doesn't look away from the window, but she smiles, and Matron _told _him this was gonna' happen one day, that there'd be a girl, and a smile like this, that he'd fall, and maybe it would hurt a lot, but for a smile like this, you pick yourself back up, you dust yourself off, you keep _trying_, and how'd she _know_- did she ever think it was gonna' be bossy little Quistis Trepe, who used to sit on him when he picked on the other kids, so he couldn't run away before Selphie told?

Matron never wrote him back, but Quisty did.

She wanted him to have a friend.

Zell left him and Matron did not want him and still he is not alone, she won't let him be, and, ok, so it's girly, it's _stupid_, but he…he wants to do the same, to make sure she doesn't hurt, that she is never alone, that she is not _unwanted_.

They hold hands all the way to Balamb.

* * *

Ma Dincht is not amused that they skipped school, but she feeds them anyway, she asks Quistis about her classes and her teachers and lets her help with lunch even though she burns Seifer's grilled cheese and tips the salad bowl onto the floor, and he wishes they could just _stay _here.

She can't lose another son, she tells him, so no joining Garden, no running off to get married (he makes a face), no going away to fight monsters, and she doesn't need to worry, 'cause he's sure as _hell _not going to that stupid place that swallowed Zell and ate him up whole and Quisty's pretty but marriage is boring, and monsters, they ain't nothin', for someone like him.

He's gonna' fight witches one day.

"Just as long as you stay within the city limits. I don't know how many you can find within the general Balamb area, but I'm sure there's something for you to get your Chocobo boxers in a twist over."

Quistis eyes him sidelong from her place at the counter, lettuce in hand.

He turns bright red. "I don't have Chocobo boxers!"

"You most certainly do- I bought them for you. Don't look at me like that, Seifer. If Zell's not here for me to embarrass, you're just going to have to step up to the plate, young man."

She snickers all the way out the door until he snarls that they're just going to pass right on by the library and the old bookstore and the Chocobos on the beach if she doesn't _shut up_.

* * *

She has only six hours total, and she stuffs in as many moments as they will hold.

The bookstore- Hyne, she could browse for _hours _among these shelves, touching their spines, their dust, their age- how much _history _they have seen; how many hands they have passed through; how many other girls have turned their pages, been swept away on their newsprint seas-

She reluctantly lets him pull her away after forty-five minutes, to stroll the beach with ice cream cones in hand, the sand in a hot white dust underneath them, just like Matron and Cid's, and it's so _strange_, the way a moment cuts you to pieces and glues you back along the seams all at the same time.

It hurts to walk on the hot white sand and look out over the ocean and remember how Sis braided her hair on the steps of the deck and Seifer splashed in the surf and Zell ate licorice whips until he could only lie groaning at her feet, holding his stomach, but it's…it's nice, too, this remembering.

He smears half his ice cream down her face and runs away laughing, and she sprints down the beach after him, wiping her cheek, screaming his name, floundering in the sand, until finally she gives up chasing him, bends down, slides off her shoe, hurls it end over end toward his back.

She watches it impact with a smile.

"Hey!"

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have- _Seifer_!" she hollers as he tackles her onto the sand, in the long shadows of the docks. "You just- my ice cream's ruined!"

"You can have the rest of mine," he offers, holding it up with a smile. It is smeared with sand, half-crushed, leaking itself in thin white streamers all down the hand he is not using to hold her down.

"I don't want it- you wiped it down my face. And it's got sand all over it."

"What's wrong with your face? Got something gross on it?"

"Of course not, but I don't want ice cream that's come into contact with-"

"Quistis," he blurts out abruptly, with this _look _on his face, and she suddenly goes very still as he tosses his ice cream cone off into the dunes and buries his sticky hand in the sand beside her ear.

He lets up on her wrist to tuck a strand of hair carefully behind her ear.

He's going to kiss her.

It has already happened once, but she is still not quite sure what to do- what if she _ruins _it, what if he _hates _it- what if he takes everything back- he doesn't want her after all, Quistis Trepe with the clumsy lips and the unsure hands and the ginger cream breath-

"Seifer," she interrupts.

"What?"

"Stop it. People can see."

"So?"

"So I don't want them _watching_."

"Are you afraid there's gonna' be some gross old pervert wanking off to it or something?"

"_Gross_. Get off me."

He holds up his hands innocently and rolls off her laughing.

* * *

Neither of them have enough money to ride the Chocobos, but they walk among them, handing out grass, petting their necks, letting their snuffling little beaks poke their hands, their necks, their noses.

She'd like to have one of these- a little yellow ball she can cradle in her hand and carry in her pocket, all fragile matchstick bones and soft blonde down. She'd keep it in her room, on her windowsill, where it would sing her down into sleep and up into morning.

Seifer drags her away from the birds and to the shops, and in one of them is a little back alcove, bricked nearly shut by books, teetering piles upon piles of antique volumes and tomes.

"One hour," he reminds her, and there is something so forlorn in his voice that she is suddenly speared by this one short sharp thrust of courage: it takes her hands and presses them to his shoulders and with these strange marionette limbs that act on their own she pushes him back into the alcove, where there are no eyes.

She is not sure precisely what to do once she is here, but he bends down, presses his lips to hers, and maybe they are both still a little awkward at first, maybe she doesn't know where to put her hands or how to move her mouth, but it doesn't matter, it's still better than anything she has ever tried before, and for one long, long minute they feel with their hands, their lips, their tongues, his shoulders pressed back into the books, hers dimpling beneath his fingertips.

It's so _frantic_; their hands race ahead of the clicking clocks, the sandglass seconds, and, Hyne, why does she have to go _back_.

He pulls away breathing heavily.

They come together again, a little more sure this time, her tongue slipping through his lips to find his, her hands sliding around to his back, to the little bunched fists of his shoulder muscles knotted beneath her nails-

"Quisty."

She stops, flexes her hands against his shoulders, shifts her hips where they are pressed to his own. "What? Did I do something wrong?"

"No. Just…uh…I need you to move your hips."

She frowns. "Am I hurting you? I didn't mean to- _oh_."

She yanks away with heat in her cheeks and a hand to her hair, an awkward flittering of her fingers that press down all the stray little hairs he has stirred up with his eager hands.

"Well, you're the one who explained to me all about what happens when a guy's penis is 'in an aroused state'. I don't know why you're so surprised." He runs a hand through his hair.

"I've read about it in a _textbook_, not had one pressed up against me. I just didn't realize-"

"You don't have to worry, Quisty- they don't bite."

She huffs and hits him across the shoulder, one good solid strike that nudges him back into the books once more.

He never loses his smile.

"You're so _annoying _sometimes."

"Yeah, but you're cute when you're mad."

"Don't compliment me; I'm irritated with you," she says, and sweeps out ahead of him, trying not to smile.

* * *

"I was thinking about how it's pretty obvious that you want to be my girlfriend," he says, standing with his hands in his pockets beside her on the train platform.

"_Excuse _me? When did I ever say-"

"Tch- it's _obvious_. It's ok; I'm pretty used to this kind of attention from girls. But you're pretty and you're not dumb so I'm fine with it."

She glares at him. "Why on earth would I want to-"

"Just say 'yes'," he says quietly, looking down at her in the ragged shadow of the halogen lamps circling the platform.

She thinks it over for a whole goddamned decade.

The train doors peel themselves hissing aside, stand waiting to swallow her whole just like stupid Garden did to Zell.

He waits for so long, swallowing, and he's not gonna' look away from her face, he's not gonna' stop studyingit for as long as he can, but give him something here, Quisty, untie the stupid knot in his stomach, the lump in his throat -please- come on- _please_-

"Ok."

She leaves him on the train platform with his hands still in his pockets, smile on his face, and for a long time he just watches, waiting, staring until the train is only a little ant speck in the distance.

* * *

**A/N: Well, there have to be some little sweet moments in between all the blood and the mayhem, right? **


End file.
